Former build strategy

[CEO Aaron]

Alright, I see plenty of folks around here who talk about supporting many formers per base. I can certainly see the merits of doing this, but I'm finding the support cost (especially with my favorite faction, Morgan) crippling. How do you afford the extra formers, at least until you reach clean reactor?

On a side note, when do you build the extra formers? All before starting base improvements? After a couple of colony pods have been spat out? When?

Just as a baseline, my typical city build starts with a rushed former, tanks (rushed after the first bar), and a garrison, then either creche or pods depending on if I'm expanding or building.

[Vlad Antlerkov]

Supply crawlers. Once you get Industrial Automation, build a supply crawler, plop it on a mineral resource outside your base radius, and set it to convoy minerals.

[Method]

especially mines. you can crawl mines (which only produce 4 minerals) and not be "wasting" any other resources by only crawling the minerals. then you can send the worker to a forest or borehole. the same goes for condensors.

[CEO Aaron]

So pre-tree farms, you just crawl up to 12-13 minerals and live with the mineral overhead, is that correct? If not, how do you cope with the eco-damage? Do minerals tied up in unit support affect your eco-damage rating?

[Method]

only minerals you produce count to eco damage (so if you make 20 and 5 are taken up by support, 15 count to ecodamage). pre-tree farms, i won't have more than 2 formers per base, (and i don't play morgan) so i won't have that much support, and i don't crawl forests, although many people do.

eco damage never seems to be that much of a problem for me, even under free market. forcing fungal bloom, and eco-friendly facilities fend it off very well.

BTW playing morgan with democracy is -3 support. is that 2 minerals per unit???

[Blake]

Minerals used by support ARE counted for Ecodamage.

You really dont need more than 1 former per base - unless your using crawlers on forest, in which case you have extra minerals to support extra formers.

I play crawlerless and build 1 former per base (as the first build!), doing mostly forest, roads and sensors, until bio-engineering and/or Adv.Eco.Engineering at which stage I build heaps more and start all the stuff like boreholes, magtubes, landbridges.

So you can get by perfectely well with 1 former per base, as long as you properly manage it, plant mostly forest, do terraforming where it counts.

If you are a support rich faction (Believers, Hive) and want/need to build for a bit build 2-3 formers per base instead. Hive especially should build lots of formers because you'll be expanding like a disease.

-3 Support is cost 1 mineral per unit, no free units, no free minerals at new base.

[Adalbertus]

Several possibilities to deal with eco-damage:
- live with it, and have some empath rovers. Gives clean minerals for each and you'll have another source of energy. You need the first to get clean minerals from Tree Farms etc!
- Plant forests. They reduce the ecological damage due to terraforming, IIRC (see datalinks for more)

BTW playing morgan with democracy is -3 support. is that 2 minerals per unit???

No, that's -4 support.
-3 is one min per unit, no free minerals.

[Method]

ok, i wasn't sure.

i thought forests didn't reduce eco damage, they just didn't cause any (except for the minerals they produce). blake?

[Zakharov VII]

IIRC, planting forests reduces ecodamage caused by terraforming, not from minerals. Supposedly roads, farms, then especially mines, condensors, mirrors, and boreholes add to ecodamage just being in a base radius. However, this is countered by the number of forests in the radius, halved by Tree Farms, and eliminated by Hybrid Forests (I've never played the expansion, but I hear Hybrid Forests are before Tree Farms...I assume each of them cut down on 50% the terraforming ecodamage, and they're cumulative), so usually it's hard to notice.

Z

[Method]

oh, well, ok.

about hybrid forests being first, its just that planetary economics is a level 4 tech, instead of level 6, so it's possible to get them first, but nobody in their right mind would skip environmental ecomomics because of the energy cap. IIRC you still need a tree farm anyway.

[Blake]

Forests do reduce ecodamage, every 8 forests allow 1 more clean mineral, altough the first happens at 4 forest tiles, next at 12 etc...
TreeFarm halves this effect, and Hybrid forest eliminates it. So it is possible for building a TF to increase ED

[Sikander]

I am one of the people who build a lot of formers, and it isn't much of a problem if your development paradigm supports it.

For my first tech I always take the former tech. This is not only a luxury for increasing production, there are a number of situations where formers are critical to your development, and even if you are fortunate to land in a spot with generous terrain and plenty of space, building roads will give you a lot of turn advantage as you move your colony pods to the frontier, and the roads and a few sensors also offer some defensive protection.

Once I have formers I beeline for crawlers. Look at all the goodies that this tech and the ones before it give you:

Wealth
Planned
FM

Crawlers
Probes

Synthmetal Armor

Network Nodes

Merchant Exchange
Virtual World
Planetary Transit System

Before I get crawlers I just run the frontier SE settings, and build only formers (1 per base except where I can garrison that base with a free and clear unit such as my initial scout, or any unity rovers etc. that I pick up along the way, in which case I build two), garrisons and colony pods. I build roads and forests, and perhaps a farm or two if there aren't any good tiles near my early bases. Every base has one former that works in the base radius building forests where it is easy to do so, and I always build roads as well. Extra formers build roads to new base sites.

Once I get crawlers there is a bit of a rush to build them. Once they roll off the line they immediately go to an unworked forest square, almost always within the base radius to crawl the two mineral there. Keep in mind that at this point in the game restrictions on tile production have no been lifted, and populations tend to be one to two workers per base. So there are plenty of squares within the base radius which are not being worked, and few that will produce more than 2 with a crawler. Not every base goes right to crawler production, those near the frontier may still be cranking out colony pods, or still working on their own former and garrison. But your first few bases should be in crawler mode ASAP, with others joining in as they finish their early builds.

I should note that at this point in the game I have switched to Wealth, which gives a nice boost to both econ and industry. My next beeline is for Secrets of the Human Brain, which nets you a couple of very nice facilities, the recycling tank and the recreation commons. These go in whenever convenient or necessary. Sometimes there are not enough forests for a crawler, so I'll build recycling tanks instead while my formers work to get some more terrain formed. I like to switch to FM when I have the money, but at Transcend level I need to have Rec Commons in place to switch really early like this, otherwise I have to watch my bases carefully to keep them from rioting when they reach population 2. I try to switch as early as possible without bringing productivity to a crawl.

The bottom line is that every crawler I produce brings in 2 minerals, so that after 6 crawlers my bases are producing at least 15 minerals, which is plenty for most bases at this point of the game. Now SPs and facilities go in very quickly, and I have enough production to put out a decent military force pre-clean if I have to. Once a base has reached it's early game industrial potential, I build another former there to help with the load. There are a lot of tiles to form, and I will revisit them later when restrictions are lifted. By that time I should be close to the clean technology as well, and eventually every base will have about 4 clean formers to make the switch from forests to condensor farms and boreholes.

[MariOne]

Originally posted by Blake
Forests do reduce ecodamage, every 8 forests allow 1 more clean mineral, altough the first happens at 4 forest tiles, next at 12 etc...
TreeFarm halves this effect, and Hybrid forest eliminates it. So it is possible for building a TF to increase ED

Blake, I think that Zak7 was more precise in his exposition.

Forests alone are not supposed to allow *more* clean minerals.
They just *give back* to you the clean minerals you lost because of terraforming.

It has been a long time since we discussed the ED formula in this forum.

Basically, the main factor for generating ED is:
Production - (16+Pops-Terraforming)

If you only have Forests, the Terraforming factor could become negative, increasing instead of lowering the 16 clean minerals you have.

But IIRC I don't think that negative values of the "Terraforming" term are counted, so excess Forests should have no effect.

I'm not sure tho, I don't recall all such details offhand, should check back.

[Blake]

Dont make me post an example game showing a base producing 18 minerals, with no ED, before any pops

[Blake]

Okay, now for the more serious reply.
I dont care how it's supposed to work, I know how it DOES work.

And heres the proof

There was one bug in my post tho, treefarms dont halve the odd negative effect, they eliminate it.

And just in case you dont believe me that something so weird could possible be true, I've attached a save showing the effect very cleary... (I've named the bases after the effect they show)

[MariOne]

Hey, I had liberally sprinkled my post with disclaimers ("I think...", "IIRC", "not sure", "should check"...).

I recall very well that you contributed to determine the undocumented TreeFarms effect in the ED formula (and apart that, the revised formula is pretty much the same we all already knew from the Datalinks).

It's just that I recalled that we did wonder wether a negative TerraformingDamage term would have increased clean minerals, but I thought to recall that someone determined it didn't.
It's not something weird, I just recalled it the other way round...
Thank you for reminding me, and for the save, which I'll donwload from home this evening (I am an advocate of testing in the editor any doubt I have, but you have spared me a bit of setup ).
(speaking of memory, it sounds MUCH more weird to me now that # of techs has an effect on ED, THIS I'll definitely have to check on my own!)

Zak7's wording: "planting forests reduces ecodamage caused by terraforming, not from minerals"
looked more consistent with my memories.
I was mistaken, as you pointed out.
Without that clause, Terraforming plainly contributes to ED, for the good (Forests) or for the bad, and without its effect being even dampened by Goodfacs!

For ease of reference of those who inquired above, here's the link to the article you contributed to write.
http://apolyton.net/misc/column/175_ecodamage.shtml

BTW, there's one quirk that I didn't bother to nitpick at the time:
Kelp Farms
The way you wrote the formula, it says that a Kelp contributes with 1 if unworked and with 0 if worked.
IIRC it should have contributed always with 1 (or eventually always with 0). Do you recall wether this was a positive finding of yours, or if it's just due to a loophole in the way the formual is written there?

BTW 2, also not documented there is that NerveStapling too contributes to EcoDamage, I have personally experienced it very recently, and that was the only atrocity I was committing in that game.

Finally, I "THOUGHT" to recall several cases in which I saw my ED going immediately down on the very moment I simply homed new units in a polluting base, reducing with their support the Net Minerals produced there.
After my failure above, I will have to recheck this too...

[Blake]

(speaking of memory, it sounds MUCH more weird to me now that # of techs has an effect on ED, THIS I'll definitely have to check on my own!)

This is very verified, I had to add some techs to get above 0 ED at all (a naive tester of the forest theory would have opened a scenerio then wondered why they are getting no ED at any production level...)

There are typos in that column, prehaps it would be worthwhile writing out the formula in a cleaner, more concise way.

The effect of minor atrocities on ED has not been nailed down, it's still flying free for someone to tackle. This is because it is HARD to pin down the effect, sometimes a few minor atrocities *seem* to create ED while other times you can hit the sanction limit before ED kicks in, but whatever happens it does kick in all at once, the theory being it's equal to 1 major atrocity worth - the magnitude would be easy to test but the trigger remains elusive. (my theory is it has something to do with diplomatic relations... prolly crazy theory but if your vendetta with everyone the ED seems to happen a lot quicker...)

Theres also some odd effects which creep in meaning that clean threshold is *higher* than calculated - this effect starts appearing at around a CML of 50-60 IIRC.

Another omission is that existence of Cent.Preserves DO directely increase clean limit at the base, due to rounding if there was 5 "dirty" minerals, after the CP there will be only 2 dirty minerals, if there is an even number of dirty minerals, no change. IMO mentioning this effect would only confuse the big picture.

Anyway the point of the new formula was mostly to provide pratical advice on how to play - the old force a pop and build TF's thing. It is not about nailing down every single nuance of how ED works, ultimately only the big picture really matters - the main causes of ED and the main ways to reduce it. Altough I do admit it would be nice to know exactly what effect minor atrocities have on ED.

[big_canuk]

Originally posted by MariOne
BTW 2, also not documented there is that NerveStapling too contributes to EcoDamage, I have personally experienced it very recently, and that was the only atrocity I was committing in that game.

Hmmm...

Sometimes nerve stapling causes ecodamage:

Verified case:

1. Captured bases.

Sometimes nerve stapling does not cause ecodamage:

Verified cases:

1. Miriam on own bases, early to mid game

2. Caretakers on own bases, early to mid game

I am not sure what other factors may affect whether nerve stapling affects ecodamage or not.

Now on topic:

I generally build about 3 to 4 formers per base, as soon as min production allows it. It seems that if I have enough mins to build a 3 row crawler in 1 turn, then I build a crawler. If I don't have enough and need them, then I will build either a 2 row former(will cost support), or a 2 row infantry probe(no support). Often production scheduling will determine the build, with the unit moving to where it is most needed.

Coastal bases build sea formers as soon as getting doct:flex. I will often try to rehome formers from coastal bases to interior bases, to allow the coastal bases the industry boost for sea formers, foil probes, transports, and a limited number of naval units, if it seems air power will be a while away.

bc

[Straybow]

Don't forget Rover-formers, so they can move into a tile and start roading right away. One per base; usually the rest can be slow formers. Don't forget the deforestation trick: when you start forestation and the forest grows spontaneously before you're done you can build a quick farm and harvest the 5 minerals if you have a few extra formers handy.

Yes, coastal cities shift their land formers to inland cities and concentrate on seaformers and supply foils. Build harnesses on all shelf tiles outside radii and send the foils to exploit them. This can generate huge income.

[Kajak]

Sikander ,
Tried your system( poorly probably) and it worked for me for my first big time victory.
Also discovered something ( also probably well disscussed in the golden lost threads of time) and that particularly for your system is the great effects of the "t" key.
1st hit all the mobile things and the bases go away, leaving only improvements.
2nd hit removes all the none living improvements ,
3rd hit removees all improvements including enhanced squares.
4th hit returns to regular view. ( We can leave out the panic when I first hit "t" by mistake).
One last point it only seems to affect the current view not the entire map.
With all the flags and stuff of the crawler system it really helped plan the advance to mag transportation.

[Sikander]

Originally posted by Kajak
Sikander ,
Tried your system( poorly probably) and it worked for me for my first big time victory.
Also discovered something ( also probably well disscussed in the golden lost threads of time) and that particularly for your system is the great effects of the "t" key.
1st hit all the mobile things and the bases go away, leaving only improvements.
2nd hit removes all the none living improvements ,
3rd hit removees all improvements including enhanced squares.
4th hit returns to regular view. ( We can leave out the panic when I first hit "t" by mistake).
One last point it only seems to affect the current view not the entire map.
With all the flags and stuff of the crawler system it really helped plan the advance to mag transportation.

Yea, I discovered the T command by accident also, and it is really handy for eliminating clutter. Nice work with your first big win!