I know I'm doing SOMETHING wrong

I have this problem, but I'm gonna 'set the stage' or so.

I'm on the Ultimate Builder Map (which looks like the Map of Planet, btw) as the Gaians. I've consumed Lal a while ago, and Miriam is up on a small island barely connected to the Lake / Ruins landmass I'm on. I took 2 mind worm boils and a couple rovers up there (I'm on Specalist difficulty, dont laugh too hard) and have managed to take quite a few of her bases. Not sure if I'm gonna take over all her bases or beat her into a submission pact, since she has a LOT of bases up there and the distance from my bases is rather high.

Here's my problem. I've built my own bases up pretty well infrastructure wise, and I'm not building too many units because of support issues.

I have no idea what to assign these bases to do! I've had all of em on Stockpile energy for a while, which has allowed me to ramp up my labs somethin' feirce (11 turn breakthroughs to 4) and occasionally funnelling it back into Economy. However, I know I'm doing something wrong.

So what do you guys do when you've built all the 'definately need' buildings, and your terraforming is almost done, and your bases are too far away to put troops onto the field?

[spartak]

Sounds like you don't have your tech set high enough to generate improvments at a fast enough rather. Once you have spaceflight and advanced spaceflight you should be churning out Hydroponic stations and solor energy thing as fast as you can. Boosts you economy really good and allows you to concentrate on other stuff that farming....

Spare formers can spend their time building tubes or being cashed in for Special projects....

[Earwicker]

While away the years by building lots of crawlers. You can put them to good use getting extra resources for their home bases, and can cash them in for SP's when you do get the next good tech.

With regards to Deirdre, definitely beat her into submission, then give back most of the bases you take from her (keep a few for strategic purposes (to launch another invasion if you are so inclined). You will be delighted with the extra commerce energy at your central bases, where the energy will be put to good use and not lost to inefficiency.

She should be more than happy to surrender to you if you are running green (which I would expect you are if mind worms are part of your attacking force).

[Kirov]

If you don't have any facilities to build at the moment, you can:

1) build crawlers (IMHO the best way to use your mineral output)

2) build probe teams (like crawlers, they don't need any support, and like crawlers, you can't have too many probe teams)

3) build space stations (but as I understand, you don't have the appropriate techs)

3) prototype new units (you can always disband them after that, and sometimes it's good to have some elements previously prototyped, esp those time-consuming)

4) assign specialists (by clicking on worker icon you can change them into technician or librarian, for instance; they don't gather any minerals then, so you don't waste any minerals.

Be sure to check if you have Bioengineering tech allowing to build units with clean reactor.

Good luck! The drones need you...

[Method]

wow. i sometimes have that problem in the early game before any facilities are discovered, but it doesn't occur to me on a regular basis

you could always sell and rebuild your improvements, esp centauri preserves and temples of planet

[Frankychan]

like they said, you could make these bases make crawlers and have them supply your bases by switching their 'Home Base' to whichever base needs resources.

What I like to do is have these bases make missiles, then distribute these missles to my other bases, switch their home base to the new one, then have the missles on "Guard Duty".

Or you could just make planet busters and kill everyone...

[Main_Brain]

Colony Pods&Formers until your Empire stretches to the bases you conquered. Alias the 'Domai Way' :=)
Also buildings some Roads in the general Direction might work.
Also you can build Units and Rehome them to the conquered BAses up there, that way you only temporary loose some Mineral Production Capacity.
Of course you could also build soem additional Formers to start Project like 'Energy Park' 'Red Planet' or smth. else.
The Crawler approach seems to be the best solution unless you, prefer the 'Worker instead of Machines! Ban Crawlers!' Approach.
Oh and raise your Research

[Kirov]

What's the 'Red Planet' project?

I didn't realise there are other big terraform improvements than Energy Park. Are there more of them, besides those two?

[Alinestra Covelia]

Another thing you could do is to gift these bases to pactmates, especially if your pactmates have very few bases and these bases are giving you management headaches.

A gifted base loses its dissenting citizen, and the inefficiency it suffers will change depending on the new managing faction. But most importantly it allows your cities another Pactmate city to trade with in terms of commerce.

Commerce isn't affected at all by distance from capitals, etc, so it's a good thing to have. I've played several games as the Hive on a conquest spree, and several as a generous Pacter, and the latter type always gave me fewer budget problems.

[Earwicker]

Originally posted by Kirov
What's the 'Red Planet' project?

Sounds like covering your whole territory with fungus. Works great later in the game (if you are not FM) when fungus squares are all incredibly productive.

Another use for vast numbers of formers is to raise land, making your territory larger and providing some land bridges (complete with mag tubes, if you have them, for easy access).

[Jamski]

And there is also the green planet project (or a walk in the woods) But then you really need hybrid forest in every base. The secondary aim is to totally kill all the fungus on Planet, then Planet is DEAD !

-Jam

[Kirov]

Yea, and maybe 'cheese planet' project, i.e. covering it all with boreholes.

[Earwicker]

Originally posted by Kirov
Yea, and maybe 'cheese planet' project, i.e. covering it all with boreholes.

Or the underwater sunlight project, boosting ecodamage until the seas rise and float everything away.

[Main_Brain]

ahh u mean the 'Blue Planet' approach?

[Clear Skies]

I wanna know what the Purple Planet approach is...

[Main_Brain]

choosing Domai and ICS'ing

[Kirov]

Originally posted by Main_Brain
choosing Domai and ICS'ing

WTF is ICS?

[Main_Brain]

Infinitive City Sprawling never stop expandig not buildign up bases asap but instead building some extra CP's and colonies and then more colonier morre mOOORE!! then Victory ress assured

[Pandemoniak]

I like the One-Blue-Dot planet. An OCC with diplomatic victory with the PK. BaseName : UN New Babylone.

[big_canuk]

Crawlers are good for harvesting resources, and to serve as mineral reservoirs for building SPs and prototypes.

As you build crawlers you will have three things to harvest with them, mins, nuts, and energy.

First send them to mines/forests to boost your mineral output. You will need to build two other things:

1. treefarms to increase you clean mineral limit(make sure you have had a fungal pop first). (Hybrid forests and centari preserves are also useful if you have tfs everywhere).

2. more formers to make more mines and farms.

Once minerals are up to modest levels (10-30 per base), then crawlers are best placed on nut tiles (condenser farms prefered) so that you can pop boom and change workers to specialists. When I am booming I often change crawlers from mins to nuts to keep +2 *every* turn. If I can't get +2 one turn, then I turn them all back to mins. (The big shortfall in food doesn't hurt until the nut box is empty.) During the pop boom I try to make 1 crawler/turn, to send to harvest 2 nuts, to keep the boom going.

Once your mins are maxed, and your pop is maxed, send crawlers to harvest energy. Often it is best to crawl crawlers back to your hq and scc, and rehome them there, and then crawl them back out to energy tiles. At your hq you have no effeciency losses, and often the most energy/labs enhancing facilities and SPs. (At frontier bases I make military and/or cps and more crawlers to get new bases off to a flying start by rehoming crawlers to them)

At this point even pre-fusion, I often make trawlers instead of crawlers close to my hq.. They cost 5 rows instead of three, but have great movement, and can harvest energy from cheap tidal harnesses. I often try to have another (or 5) bases close to my hq/scc that have enough min output to make 1 trawler per turn for rehoming to the hq/scc.

As you can see, the sky is the limit for making this production machine. You should never "run out of things to build".

bc

[CEO Aaron]

If you don't know what to build, then your tech rate doesn't match your industrial output. Not necessarily bad, but the best way to while away the turns between techs is to work on increasing your energy harvest.

Unless your efficiency is _very_ high, skewing your Econ/Psych/Labs balance can be very wasteful. A better bet is to try to get your cities into Golden Age and start running wealth (Assuming you're playing SMAX not SMAC). This make every base in GA produce 2 energy per square, which should more than pay for the cost of psych to get you in GA to begin with.

Boreholes outside your city radii crawled for energy will help get your tech rate to the promised land: 1 tech/turn. Also if you dig boreholes near costal areas, you'll reap another benefit: High temperatures from Borehole mining create higher rainfall around them.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

AS other said, the best thing to do at this point is increase your energy output/research rate.


At 4 turns/tech thats not bad but you can do better.

Look at two alternatives.

1) Creation of a super science city. Start all bases making either crawlers or (my preference trawlers). Home trawlers to SSC (assuming it is a coastal base) and then move them out to tidal harnesses. (WHen you design your trawler equip it with deep radar for free this will allows you an early warning system. Your SSC is one that you usually can rely on to have little to no efficiency losses (so the norm is to have it your HQ base). Keep pumping trawlers and sea fomers to reap in the energy.

2) Max your population via judicious use of nutrient crawlers/trawlers. Same approach max your science city first by pumping in nuts via crawlers/trawlers and hopefully your pop booming for instant population adds. Once youv'e maxed out the population (assuming you have littel trade income) look to remove workers from the worked squares in preference making them Engineers.

At the point of the game you are in its all about maximing energy. Crawlers/Trwalers are it until advent of Hydroponic and Energy Sats.

Feel free to continue expanding your empire through additional bases and gift bases to your submissive pactmates.

[johndmuller]

Most likely you are ready to raise the difficulty level in your next game - then (good) things will not come as easily.