What are the most useful strategies you have picked up here? - Page 2

jacobsev · October 20, 2002, 13:13

Can someone out there explain this eco-trick to me?????
Jacob Sev

Method · October 20, 2002, 13:49

explained in detail here and here

CEO Aaron · October 22, 2002, 20:01

I did find the eco-damage forumula enlightening, but more and more I've been building trance rovers and choppers and deliberately pissing planet off, just to harvest pearls or get free units.

Straybow · October 23, 2002, 04:24

Yeah, I usually have a few empath noodles and cruisers (with the best weapon that doesn't bump up the cost) for pearl harvesting. It can be fun to run green with rampant natives. Sometimes my newer frontier bases get bogged down supporting captured units.

fluffy · October 23, 2002, 06:35

Quote:

Originally posted by Straybow
Sometimes my newer frontier bases get bogged down supporting captured units.

The trick is to send your units far enough away that the captured units aren't assigned to the closest base - from memory I think this is about 10-15 squares.

It may even be worth sending some formers with them to deliberately plant fungus to 'farm' the native life. An isolated island with no other factions is ideal.

Straybow · October 25, 2002, 01:27

It doesn't matter how far away from your base, only whether a base from another faction is closer. Try a 3 faction huge map.

Flubber · May 28, 2003, 11:40

Bumped since there seem to be a number of new players and this thread touches on a number of non-obvious strategies

Frankychan · May 28, 2003, 21:14

wow, this is old skool.

another one-Energy Park. Didn't even think that this was a possibility.

For those new players.

An energy park is raising a large bit of land up to the max and placing solar collectors and Echelon mirrors on the tiles, then use crawlers to collect the goodies. I was surprised at how good this works.

Jac de Molay · May 30, 2003, 08:56

The energy park

, I built the granddaddy of them all using the hive after building the Living refinery, and supporting as many units free as city size.

I must've had the entire top quarter of the map bumped up to 3000-3500m with collectors and ech mirrors.

lord of the mark · May 30, 2003, 09:03

Quote:

Originally posted by Frankychan
wow, this is old skool.

another one-Energy Park. Didn't even think that this was a possibility.

For those new players.

An energy park is raising a large bit of land up to the max and placing solar collectors and Echelon mirrors on the tiles, then use crawlers to collect the goodies. I was surprised at how good this works.

so far ive used crawlers either within city radius, or for the natural resources found outside, rather than improving areas outside of city just for crawlers. That sounds very powerful - Im saving it for when i get in trouble on higher levels.

Adalbertus · May 30, 2003, 11:29

I've started playing SMAC a bit late (2001) and so most of the discussions were already over, I just learned from them.

The single most important strategy I learned was Ned's(?) 2-on-diagonal base spacing. It made me roughly 50% more effective ...

Overall, I've got to hail

Vel's Strategy Guide
the source of all wisdom on ~~Earth~~Planet

Turn advantage is the most important concept, and everything else boils down to it.

Other things I prefer to do now and I learned here:
- Nearly all specialist base
- excessive use of shells (mostly for the +1 in morale!)
- Yeah, and ecodamage is good

Frankychan · May 30, 2003, 21:22

L.O.M. You should move the crawlers outside of your base radius. Your workers will eventually get to that tile. With the crawler, if you have any "goody-tiles" untouched in your territory, you can have the crawler come up and scoop it into your base's resouces.

Adalbertus · May 31, 2003, 17:12

Frankychan,
You're a nearly exclusive Hive player, am I right? Then you're right with your crawler spacing. You'll play with a high police rating and have lots of police, ok.
If you have normal or negative police rating, it's different. You'll have to invest loads of resources in appeasing drones, when you have a big empire. Or you go specialist. When you go specialist, you'll have enough unused tiles in the base radius. And if your base is far away from your HQ, all normal or crawled energy is lost to inefficiency. Not so specialist research and commerce. So you'll want to crawl nutrients to get a specialist more or two.

Frankychan · May 31, 2003, 21:19

Quote:

Originally posted by Adalbertus
Frankychan,
You're a nearly exclusive Hive player, am I right? Then you're right with your crawler spacing. You'll play with a high police rating and have lots of police, ok.
If you have normal or negative police rating, it's different. You'll have to invest loads of resources in appeasing drones, when you have a big empire. Or you go specialist. When you go specialist, you'll have enough unused tiles in the base radius. And if your base is far away from your HQ, all normal or crawled energy is lost to inefficiency. Not so specialist research and commerce. So you'll want to crawl nutrients to get a specialist more or two.

You got that right. I'm a Hive player. Ahhhh, I didn't know about that. That kind of sucks that you don't get a growth bonus. I usually fill out my base tiles around the middle of the game.

I figure you just build up your empire, get enough votes, then repeal the U.N. Charter. I usually do this and just nerve staple to my hearts content for those bases that I can't send my police to.

Wow, maybe I should try and experience the other factions. I don't think I've ever played the Peacekeepers yet, so I'll try them out.

But once you go Hive, you never go back.

Flubber · June 1, 2003, 00:52

Ah frankychan

The beauty of this game is in the unique attributes of the different factions. I have been totally immersed at different times in about 7 of the 14 factions . What works for the Hive will be mediocre for the university and impossible for the Morganites. Finding the nuances is what keeps me so involved in this game

Sikander · June 1, 2003, 19:49

Quote:

Originally posted by lord of the mark

so far ive used crawlers either within city radius, or for the natural resources found outside, rather than improving areas outside of city just for crawlers. That sounds very powerful - Im saving it for when i get in trouble on higher levels.

Actually this is a completely viable strategy (using crawlers within the base radius), and whether or not you wish to use them outside of the base radius has more to do with the the particulars of the game you are playing than the difficulty level. Obviously if you space your bases so that there is no or little overlap, you will have a lot of unused tiles within your base radius. There are 20 workable tiles in a base radius, and even Lal with the AV can only work 18 of them before hab domes (unless he has pod boomed the base to 20 pop). This will also require a lot of drone control capability, as 20 workers and no specialists requires a lot of psych / police to keep out of drone riots.

Earlier in the game you won't be able to use a fraction of the available space for workers. This led me to two conclusions:

1) I don't want my bases all that far apart. At most I'll space them 3 on the diagonal (every base's neighbors are located 3 tiles away to the NSEW), and usually 2 on the diagonal. 3 on the diag spacing gives each base 12 workable tiles, which is plenty, while 2 on the diag spacing gives each base 7 workable tiles, which turns out to be fairly optimum IMO. Close spacing also tends to give you a lot of turn advantage, as your colony pods quickly reach the new base site and start producing rather than costing the mother base a mineral for support.

2) I do want to use crawlers in the base radius for several reasons. For one thing they are a lot easier to defend that way, being close to garrison troops and within intereptor range of my base. Secondly, they don't have to travel very far, and neither do the formers that have to prepare the tiles that they work, both of which yield some turn advantage. The formers have the same advantages as the crawlers in that they are easily defended while they do their work. Finally, if my crawlers are nonetheless destroyed by the enemy, I can simply transfer population from specialists to workers to keep my production up while I build replacement crawlers.

I think these principals hold true generally for most styles of play, but they are particularly effective for a specialist heavy approach. Whenever you use crawlers you really want to terraform with the object of getting one FOP (factor of production, ie nutrients, or energy, or minerals) in a tile as high as possible, as crawlers can only haul one type of FOP from a tile at a time. In a specialist approach the most common type of FOP hauled is going to be nutrients, though minerals are also common. Thus tiles with condensors and farms (on flat or rolling tiles) are built up and crawlers assigned to haul nutrients to my base, or roads and mines (on rocky terrain) are built and crawlers haul minerals to the base.

Conversely, tiles which produce two or three FOP in nearly equal numbers are not very crawler efficient (eg boreholes, farm / solar, or forests after the early game). These are best worked, otherwise you are losing 33-66% of their potential. Or perhaps not built at all if your intention is to create all-specialist bases.

Energy parks and super science cities (SSC)

Super science cities are bases that have been optimized for high science output. This is usually done in a base which has one or more of the SPs that help energy or science production, such as the Merchant Exchange, and often an energy park or a trawler (sea crawlers which usually work tidal harnesses) fleet. Most people build only one (or none) SSC, located in the capital, which loses no energy to corruption regardless of your efficiency rating. Energy parks are simply areas which have been optimized for energy production to be crawled back to the SSC, usually some combination of terrain raised to 3000+ meters, solar collectors and echelon mirrors. They are expensive in former time, and in some cases difficult to defend, with energy trawlers typically being even more difficult to defend but with a more advantageous former turn to energy ratio.

Using these methods you can build a base's energy / labs production up so high that it will eventually produce one tech a turn by itself, the key word being eventually. Once you have reached this point, further expansion of the energy park / trawler fleet is useless for the purposes of tech, with excess labs being lost. At that point, it is time to either build another SSC, or to quit expanding your park.

Yang

The Hive is a very powerful faction when played to its strengths, and a number of approaches work well. A SSC in the capital is one of these approaches, as is a specialist heavy approach. SSCs in other bases are going to suffer from the Hive's tendency to run with low efficiency, losing tons of energy to inefficiency. The Hive has one key advantage for a specialization approach, and one fairly stiff penalty. On the advantage side, running Police State gives the Hive 4 supportable units per base without penalty, which means that it can easily support at least two formers per base. On the downside, the Hive's inability to run Democracy means that pop booms are much more difficult to achieve, requiring either a golden age or the Cloning Vats. Another means of getting your population up in developed bases is the pod boom, where small bases on the periphery of the empire can build colony pods rapidly (thanks to the industry bonuses) and regrow their populations rapidly as well (thanks to the growth bonus, and the base's small size), with the pods moving to the mature base and being used to increase that base's pop rather than building a new base.

What are specialists, why are they good?

Specialists are those guys on the right of your population queue in the city screen who don't work any tile. Instead they effectively supply you with energy. They don't produce raw energy (ie that stuff that is divided up into labs, econ and psych on your government screen), but instead directly produce labs, econs and / or psych.

Advantage #1: Specialists can't be drones, which means that you don't have to police them or nerve staple them or build drone control facilities for them.

Advantage #2: Specialists never lose any productivity to inefficiency, which can be considerable when efficiency is low, or the base in question if far from the capital, or when the base in question is captured.

Advantage #3: You can choose what sort of specialists to use, simply by clicking on a specialist and selecting the desired type from the menu that appears. This can be very useful for stressing one form of energy production over another when to do so via raw energy allocation in the government screen can be costly if you aren't running a paradigm economy.

Advantage #4: Specialists are not subject to the same production limitations that workers are in the early game. Thus a borehole worker can only produce 2 energy before Environmental Econ, while that same worker turned into a Technician or Librarian would produce 3 econ or 3 labs respectively.

Adalbertus · June 5, 2003, 14:34

I've still not yet played all factions. I quite regularly play Uni, Gaians, Hive, sometimes Morgan, Drones or Cyborg, had a start with each Spartans, Cult, and Pirates, and the rest I even didn't touch. So far the first two years into the game.

Sikander,
Two comments:
- Spacing 3 in diagonal gives you 16 workable tiles per base (the overlap tiles count 0.5 each, not nothing).
- Specialist advantage#4 isn't that huge IMHO. You should try to get at least 4 FOP per tile even in the early game. The important bits are #1 and #2

Reading this thread I just realised that as soon as you have Nessus Mining Station (and Hab Domes), there is no reason to keep Boreholes. Turn them into nut production and get minerals from space. Only exception: SSC.

Mongoose · June 5, 2003, 15:29

Nessus stations have that oh, so inconvenient vulnerability to enemy orbital defense pods.

It would be rather disconcerting to get attacked by say, 30 ODPs and to have your industry permanently crippled.

Adalbertus · June 5, 2003, 16:35

Mongoose, never had a situation like this. I've never seen an AI ODP. Do you have to first kill all enemy ODP's before you can attack the other satellites? If yes, the solution simply would be to have more ODP's than your favourite enemies. Otherwise, you're right ...

Mongoose · June 5, 2003, 18:37

I am pretty sure you don;t have to go through ODPs to get to other sats...just to get your PBs through. It is very doubtful that you would get blown out of near Chiron orbit by the AI. Another human, however...

In a pbem I just completed, I did what I just described...put up 30 or 40 ODPs and knocked out all of my UoP opponent's skyfarms and power sats. I had intended those ODPs to clear the way for a carrier-borne PB assault. No joy. The map was too large. A few turns before I was going to be ready to instabuild 20 or so Fusion PBs, I finally got infiltration on him....he was 14 techs ahead of me and looked to be able to transcend before I could get my carriers close enough, MCC notwithstanding. So, I did the only honourable thing....PB'd the Hunter (held by the UoP's ally, AI Lal) probe-raped the PK in the aftermath of the PB attack, cashed in my hoard of 7 AAs and beat the UoP to transcendence by two turns. Playing Hive, mind you. How sweet!

Frankychan · June 6, 2003, 03:30

played a short game with Lal.......how in the world to people actually stand him?

He's an blabbling idiot and running Demo is so.........i don't know what.

Mr. President · June 6, 2003, 04:27

Quote:

Originally posted by Frankychan
played a short game with Lal.......how in the world to people actually stand him?

He's an blabbling idiot and running Demo is so.........i don't know what.

I think we have sig material here!

I learned how to use crawlers from reading topics here, but I didn't like it so I stopped.

Sikander · June 6, 2003, 04:40

Quote:

Originally posted by Adalbertus

Sikander,
Two comments:
- Spacing 3 in diagonal gives you 16 workable tiles per base (the overlap tiles count 0.5 each, not nothing).

Argh, good point. I actually used to know that, but haven't used the spacing in a while. It also leaves one empty square per base that is not workable, which is a great place for an echelon mirror and a crawler for your SSC. This assumes that you aren't playing a heavily specialized approach, but instead a raw energy approach. Raise the empty square to 3000 meters, and the 8 workable squares around it will rise to 2000 meters. Put farms and solar collectors on those squares. They'll produce 4 energy each, as well as 3 nuts (assuming they are rainy, which you can assure by using some condensors in the ring of squares around your base if necessary. Another nice touch is to drill a river on the 3000 meter high square where the echelon mirror is.

Quote:

Originally posted by Adalbertus

- Specialist advantage#4 isn't that huge IMHO. You should try to get at least 4 FOP per tile even in the early game. The important bits are #1 and #2

Reading this thread I just realised that as soon as you have Nessus Mining Station (and Hab Domes), there is no reason to keep Boreholes. Turn them into nut production and get minerals from space. Only exception: SSC.

True, I sometimes quit building the boreholes after Nessus, and always after hab domes.

Sikander · June 6, 2003, 04:47

Quote:

Originally posted by Frankychan
played a short game with Lal.......how in the world to people actually stand him?

He's an blabbling idiot and running Demo is so.........i don't know what.

Nonetheless, Lal is very strong. Try a thin mega-expansion. Lal's talents assure you that you can expand for quite some time without drone riots. You can even run FM, and still not worry about a thing until your bases hit 3 pop (at Transcend, it's even better at the lower difficulty levels). After your initial expansion you can use Lal's talents to achieve easy Golden Ages. This makes him extraordinarily flexible. You can get +4 econ and a pop boom by running Demo / FM / Wealth / GA, assuming that you have built children's creches. Very strong.

Jamski · June 6, 2003, 06:11

All the factions are equally strong, played the right way. I have so much trouble deciding who to play next.....

-Jam

Flare · June 6, 2003, 09:04

Let me see. What have I learned here?
-Energy Parks are great!
-The power of specialist.
-Crawlers are power!
-Improved warmongering abilities!
-Smaller base distance. Ether
B--B or B---B
(two or three spaces between bases.)
-The ecodamage formula.
-The power of choppers.
-Better ways to use Social Engineering.
-and last but not least...
~~Drum Roll~~

Vel's Stratagy Guide

lord of the mark · June 6, 2003, 11:12

Quote:

Originally posted by Sikander

1) I don't want my bases all that far apart. At most I'll space them 3 on the diagonal (every base's neighbors are located 3 tiles away to the NSEW), and usually 2 on the diagonal. 3 on the diag spacing gives each base 12 workable tiles, which is plenty, while 2 on the diag spacing gives each base 7 workable tiles, which turns out to be fairly optimum IMO. Close spacing also tends to give you a lot of turn advantage, as your colony pods quickly reach the new base site and start producing rather than costing the mother base a mineral for support.

In civ2, there was range of basing styles, from ICS to full perfectionist with no overlap. Partly cause i liked big, perfectionist cities, and partly cause i saw ICS as something of a cheat (especially in SP) i rarely built any significant base overlap.

In SMAC, with large amounts of terrain virtually worthless at the beginning (A. Fungus B. FOP limits that take several techs to get past - vs civ2 beeline for monarchy C. and just apparently less generous regular terrain - no equivalent of a roaded shield grassland) trying for no overlap at the beginning leaves too few good city sites. In my current game at emperor - oops - thinker - im hemmed in by miriam and yang - i built 3 close non-overlapped bases - to expand to the east past a load of fungus,i had to go pretty far for my 4th city. So now im trying to use some of the former/crawler info ive gotten here to build in army with 4 bases, and go after Yang, rather than try continued peaceful expansion. Ive managed to get the particle impactos and am now switching to units, but tech advance has been slow (and im university) I presume this strat would have been much easier with larger number of overlapping bases.

BTW, i am going after Yang first, as i assume miriam, with weaker tech advance, will be easier to get rid of later. Hive seems more of a threat.

Jamski · June 6, 2003, 13:29

The trick is actually to kill Miraim early when she has practically NO tech

If your 2-2-2 rovers are up agaists 1-1-1(fanatic) units, them its an easy ride. Use the 4-3-2 rovers these upgrade to on a tougher oponent like Yang. Don't go after Yang early because of his free perimiter defences, making even 1-2-1 units indestructible untill you get better weapons

-Jam

Hydro · June 6, 2003, 13:47

I agree with Jam. Kill Miriam first.

But probe Yang to death, stealing energy (and any tech, if he has it) to cripple his economy before he gets going. That way you punish both nasty factions where they are the weakest before they get up to speed!

Snowflake · June 6, 2003, 14:34

Several small questions:

1. Will the river be lost if you raise the a square with river? What about ridge square, can you raise it?

2. Do you always sign a treaty with everyone you met at first (if you don't plan to eliminate him) or do you stay truce? I know that you'll benefit from commerce (except if the other faction is morgan sometimes you don't benefit) but can you probe frequently to a treaty partener?

3. Sometimes when I right click a specialist trying to change him from one (say, doctor) to another (say, librarian) he will not change. I have to change him to a worker by clicking on a square and only then I can change him to a librarian. Why is that?