Pop booming - is it worth it?

*puts on flame-proof shields*

I know everyone talks about pop booming as a good thing, but I'm having problems with some of the end results of it.

I'm playing my first after-specialist games (forget the diffiulty name) and I'm pop booming (at least, I think I am, I'm not getting the "reports major population boom" window that sometimes comes up) - one of my problems - even with the PKs for crying out loud - is that I'm getting drones. Lots of drones. This starts a nasty cycle - Drones need facilities to placate drones, facilities need energy to run, energy used there doesnt go into my coffers, etc etc.

So tell me, what in the world am I doing wrong?

[Flubber]

Pop booming is NEVER bad IMHO

The key is to be prepared-- for me that means having crawled food or the ability to quickly crawl food-- Turn those drones into specialists for science or cash-- I use crawlers heavily so its no big deal to me if only 2-3 of the citizens are working squares (but it usually gets set up that 4-5 can work-- 2 for a rec commons and 2 for a police infantry plus the base content guy, depending on efficiency) --

The worst case scenario is that you make the would-be drone into a doctor-- its not productive now
but it can become productive and it really does you no harm as long as you continue to have the excess food

I don't mind having 2-4 Librarians or technicians in a base when its at size 7--- Later in the game it gets even better-- When Thinkers become available after MMI, I find that Drone problems are pretty much a thing of the past

Ah, there's the cruxii of the matter -

1) I'm playing Blind Research. I dunno when I'll get crawlers, and at the difficulty I'm playing at, the AI declares Vendetta if you even ask for techs.

2) Energy being funneled into drone-prevention drains money from all sources - including labs - so crawlers are even farther away.

3) I'm playing so that every square is already in a base's production radii.

4) Police units are showing their inability to help - placate one drone now, next turn, there is another one to placate, and unless I have +3 police, the effect on drones isn't enough to stop the Red Wave. Same thing with doctors. Replaces 1 drone the turn I put it there, next turn I have to do another to placate another to avoid riots = eventual stagnation / starvation.

Guess I'll go back to Specialist...

[Petek]

Some more suggestions and observations:

* Play a couple of practice games where you concentrate on pop booming.

* As Flubber says, be prepared. Get those Rec Commons in place. Build the Human Genome and/or Virtual World.

* It's tough to pop boom before crawlers or Tree Farms. You usually need one or the other to generate excess nutrients.

* Get Vel's guide. He discusses pop booming in detail.

Hope this helps.

P.S. -- What do you mean by

"3) I'm playing so that every square is already in a base's production radii."

Just taking a wild guess, perhaps you are referring to crawlers. However, crawlers can harvest resources in any square that is not otherwise being worked, even within a base's production radius. If you already knew this, I apologize.

Petek

Originally posted by Petek
Just taking a wild guess, perhaps you are referring to crawlers. However, crawlers can harvest resources in any square that is not otherwise being worked, even within a base's production radius. If you already knew this, I apologize.

I do know about it, but what would be the point of, say, having a crawler crawling nuts that are already inside your base production radii, if your workers can do it?

Unless you gain the nuts from the crawler, meaning a worker doesnt get it, so you can use a specialist to... up your physch / econ / labs... and still be gaining the... resource..

By George, I think I got it!

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Think about it deeper.

Take a crawler and apply it to a high single resource yeilding square.

For instance a rocky roaded mine yields 4 mins after resource lifting. Or better yet a rocky roaded square with a min special yields 7 mins (no restricition lifting required). Place a crawler on it gain the singel high resource and use the worker as a specialist.

For complete specializiation gain teh weaher paradigm special project. Condensor/farm squares yields 4 nuts pre-restriction lifting. Crawler the nuts. Allow base to grow via pop boom and specialize pop points. Doctors don't really gain you anything but other specilists do gain you either lab or econ. In the midgame Engineers are the bomb as each point of population specialized is worth 5 energy. So a single 4 nutrient square crawlered yields 2 pop points each worth 5 energy (10 in total) can't find a better bargain in the mid game (and later it gets better by making soil enrichers at 6 nutrients or 15 energy).

Taken to its complete implementation it results in a base full of nothing but specialists and a bunch of crawlers bringing in nuts and mins. No chance for drone riots as all pop points are specialized. All specialist energy is inefficieny proof.


pop booming is insanely effective you just need keep juggling your specialists. A few turns of boom from small pop sizes to cap out your base size before requiring hab complexes. Pause, build psych facilties then add hab complexes and boom up to next pop cap.

[Kirov]

To learn pop boom, you can play Lal, under FM and 20% PSYCH I often pop boom almost unwillingly.

As with crawlers, remember the simple thing - you don't always have as many workers as many tiles neat to harvesting. And using specialists is indeed a very good way, tho I use it only in border bases (due to inefficiency).

BTW, what do you think about Thinker?

Ok, just to make sure I'm doing this right -

Basically in every resource square, I build whatever increases it the most, and then crawling that. As most of em are Nuts, I've been farm-condensing em and then crawling em back to base instead of humans. Cuz I'm (supposedly) pop booming, I've taken off all nuts except for 2 at all my bases and (cuz I dont have any techs that make em obsolete) doing doc/tech/Lib in varying amounts (question - should I make all specialists of one base of a certain type, or would it be better to spread em out?)

One of the things I also worry about is, that if one of the AIs does attack me (I'm on an island, but the islands are close) I'm worried about them attacking my crawlers. Does this typically pose a problem?

Another thing - how much crawling is too much crawling? I'm wondering if crawling nuts-or-minerals-or-energy from forests is wise or not. On one hand, its one more specialist, but on the other hand, I'm losing 2 other sorts of FoPs.

[Sikander]

Originally posted by ESpark
Ok, just to make sure I'm doing this right -

Basically in every resource square, I build whatever increases it the most, and then crawling that. As most of em are Nuts, I've been farm-condensing em and then crawling em back to base instead of humans. Cuz I'm (supposedly) pop booming, I've taken off all nuts except for 2 at all my bases and (cuz I dont have any techs that make em obsolete) doing doc/tech/Lib in varying amounts (question - should I make all specialists of one base of a certain type, or would it be better to spread em out?)

Crawlers can only haul one FOP from a square, so they are best used on squares which predominantly produce one FOP. The best squares for this are condensor / farm squares (produce 4 food, 6 when you get soil enrichers) and rocky / mine / road squares which produce 4 mins. Other types of squares typically produce more varied FOPs, and are better off worked if you have the choice.

The whole system is flexible, and should be tuned to meet your needs. If you are short of contentness in your population (which seems to be the case you outline above), then you need to focus your population growth into specialists. Terraform with an eye to this by making squares like those mentioned above, which will give you a good payout for each crawler and won't make you risk drone riots by having too many workers.

If you aren't having problems with drones, then you might want to use more workers. Here you have the option of terraforming squares that have good overall production (like forests, or farm / solar) and working them. You may choose to do so without penalty, and with a good deal less former time (for the forests at least) then building condensors everywhere.

In either case don't be afraid to use crawlers in the production radius of your base. I use almost none outside the production radius myself. The reasons for this are two-fold. First, until you have hab domes in the late game, your bases will not grow beyond 18 (Lal with the AV) or 16 (for everyone else with the AV, 14 without). So you won't be able to use those extra squares for anything but crawlers for many of those squares for a large chunk of the game.

Secondly, even if you are working a lot of squares, it will be difficult to do so without a large investment of one sort or another in drone control. An excellent way to control drones is by using specialists. This allows you to set your psych % to zero, and then allocate psych producing specialists (Doctors, Empaths, Thinkers and Transcendi) as needed in each base individually. This allows you to save money on your psych allocation (I almost always run 0% playing at Transcend level) and on drone reduction or psych enhancing facilities by limiting the number of drones that are produced at a base by making them specialists instead. This way a size 12 base doesn't have to deal with 9 drones with infrastructure and police alone. It can instead work 6 squares, crawl the rest, and put the other 6 population up as specialists. Now it only has to contend with 6 potential drones (3 actual drones given the example above), and if the infrastructure isn't there already to deal with them, there are 6 specialists ready, willing and able to switch over to psych types in order to keep the base in business.

Originally posted by ESpark

One of the things I also worry about is, that if one of the AIs does attack me (I'm on an island, but the islands are close) I'm worried about them attacking my crawlers. Does this typically pose a problem?

The two best ways to defend an island (IMO) are with airpower (#1 with a bullet) or with artillery if you don't have planes or helos. Simple infantry based artillery units wreak havoc with enemy transports and native life alike. Build a road and sensor network along your coasts to pick up any incursions to your territory. If the enemy is close enough to shell you terraforming, then he is close enough to suffer some sensor and height advantage boosted artillery blasts as well.

Another early game gambit I am particularly fond of is simply denying the enemy a place to land. I do this by occupying every square where his troops could unload off the transport. In this instance crawlers are not a defensive liability, the are in fact an asset (for the moment) every bit as useful and your best defensive units for blocking the enemy's potential landing zone, and instead of costing you support, crawlers can make you a tidy profit every turn.

Originally posted by ESpark
Another thing - how much crawling is too much crawling? I'm wondering if crawling nuts-or-minerals-or-energy from forests is wise or not. On one hand, its one more specialist, but on the other hand, I'm losing 2 other sorts of FoPs.

Too many crawlers are in the eye of the beholder. For instance, I use a very tight base spacing. Every base is two squares (on the diagonal) in every cardinal direction from it's neighbors. This gives each base a total of 8 squares to work from including the base square itself. I crawl 5 of the remaining squares, the other two are boreholes which I put workers on. This is extremely productive, regardless of faction or SE settings. It is also crawler and land intensive beyond what a vast majority of players will ever use.

As far as forest production goes, the bottom line question to ask is "Which produces more?". For instance a worker will perhaps produce more on a forest than a crawler (and a specialist) will. But either situation is better than not working the square at all. Thus if you have crawlers early on, but not enough population to work the square you will be better off building a crawler to work the square for you. I typically build forests early on, and then replace them with boreholes and condensor / farms when I have gotten restrictions lifted and built enough formers (clean is critical here) to do the job. I build crawlers as early as I can (a process that is aided immensely by playing with directed research on) and "bootstrap" my industry by crawling minerals from forest squares and building more crawlers until I have a decent amount of production in even my newest and smallest bases. I call this "pop booming from the production queue" because in essence you are growing your potential to harvest FOP just like you do when pop booming, albeit more slowly.

Pop booming + crawlers + specialists is a recipe for economic success in SMAC/X. You can do without any one of them to some extent successfully, but to play without any of them requires a high level of skill to be successful, especially at the higher difficulty levels.

[johndmuller]

As you have likely figured out, the major element necessary to foster a pop boom is a surplus of nutrients. So unless your base is packed with rainy jungle nut specials, you will likely need some way to boost nut production above minimal levels. The likely suspects are crawlers, nut (un)restrictions, and tree farms, requiring Industrial Auto, Gene Splicing and Environmental Econ respectively. Blind research is not entirely out of your control; specializing in the category of the tech you want next (or omitting the category of one(s) you definitely don't want) supposedly improves your odds of getting what you want. There is also trading, buying and/or stealing, each of which offers some element of choice,

Facilitywise, you will want Creches (and for factions who can't run Democracy or Planned, or have an intrinsic growth penalty, it is necessary to use the Golden Age growth boost to get the necessary growth factor; GA will be easier with some of the drone-control SPs as well as the usual RecComms, cops, etc. - Note Golden Age pop booms only work with SMAX). Drone-control facilities are not strictly speaking necessary for pop booming, but you will need to provide additional nuts to support additional specialists to deal with drones beyond whatever facilities or police control you do have.

See also this thread on pop booms..

[John Paul Jones]

Pop-booming to accelerate your most energetic/research-friendly base(s) is positively a good idea! Especially your capital, coastal bases and those containing projects such as the merchant exchange, supercollider, network backbone and/or theory of everything)
Other bases, which have nothing to do but stockpile, should be feeding these megalopolises with supply crawlers to harvest food and energy.
I'd go so far as to say that once you have mag-tubes connecting your cities it would also make sense to pod-boom target areas from more crowded bases (with +6 growth and no nutrients). Soon it's residential population skyrockets to just under a million colonists (or a potential 78 Specialists to organise so make sure your screen-res is set @ 1024x768

Question :

I'm playing as Lal, and my booming has gone pretty well - only thing I worry about booming with other factions is that, as lal, I have a bit of "buffer room" in regards to discontentment, as I have a ton of talents at my bases. I know I don't have to worry about pop booming and drones as much for my next attempted player (Yang) since he has a great police rating, and being able to suhpress a lot of drones.

However, what do you do if yer attempting to pop boom, and you've run out of drone-suhpressing items, and your police are in place?

Oh, and do people use Sky Farms as help for booming? I found I was able to pop faster if I had a few flying around.

[Flubber]

Sky Farms-- if you have the CBA as well, these can be a trigger to boom ALL your bases-- I use them a fair bit--( get the cloning vats as well and make your SE choices irrelevant while booming)-- the reality though is that my main bases will have been boomed long before these become available-- Late game, this combo can lead to explosive growth and can also be used for bases getting hab domes to grow to huge sizes ( each new citizen immediately becomes a specialist so drone control is not an issue)

Yang-- you are running police state/planned right?? -- well I never find drone control that tough with them since each police unit quells two drones, using non-lethal methods ( 3 with the ascetic virtues IIRC) and I rarely have more than 6 citizens "working" anyway --- So 2-3 police mean a drone free base without any facilities required

My problem is that I find the Hive very difficult to boom in the first place-- The econ minus seems to make it more difficult to get to golden ages ( and of couse the GA pop boom does not work at all in SMAC)

[Alinestra Covelia]

The Hive don't really need a pop boom. They can have a natural +50% growth rate anyway, with Planned and Children's Creches and not worry about having to maintain it with dodgy social choices and dangerous surrounding environments.

[Kirov]

There is a very big difference between +50% growth and pop boom.

[MariOne]

Yang way is PTS and Pod-booming (if you don't have SMAX or can't afford the GAs).
A pod-factory base can churn out 2 CPs every 3 turns, under the proper conditions (a couple of BHs and some crawlers available in its radius, few money to rush the CPs every turn).
{credits ot Ogie}
The pro is that you don't need to worry to keep pop-booming conditions in the rest of your faction, the con is that those CP need to travel all their way to add to the more distant bases (once you run out of where to place new ones)

[knowhow2]

Originally posted by Kirov
There is a very big difference between +50% growth and pop boom.

pop-booming only garantee 1 pop grow each round while pod-booming actually can result in as many as possbile (100 pops each if you like).

[Sikander]

Originally posted by ESpark
Question :

I'm playing as Lal, and my booming has gone pretty well - only thing I worry about booming with other factions is that, as lal, I have a bit of "buffer room" in regards to discontentment, as I have a ton of talents at my bases. I know I don't have to worry about pop booming and drones as much for my next attempted player (Yang) since he has a great police rating, and being able to suhpress a lot of drones.

However, what do you do if yer attempting to pop boom, and you've run out of drone-suhpressing items, and your police are in place?

Oh, and do people use Sky Farms as help for booming? I found I was able to pop faster if I had a few flying around.

Use specialists to reduce the number of potential drones in a base, as well as adding a bit of psych. This of course requires some excess nutrients, which you can get by crawling them into the base, or by using terraforming that produces a lot of nuts, or both.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Sik is right when it comes to a good pop boom a slight excesss of nuts is right out. Make sure you have loads of extra nuts as this allows you the freedom to continue with the boom and specialize your citizens to stay out of drone trouble. Check ALL your bases every turn during your boom phase and adjust citizens/specialists every turn to keep from drone rioting.

A bit of micromanagement that will aid your game immensely.

[spartak]

As mentioned before simply setting your Psych to 20% will fix mkost of your drone problems and will add to the effectivness of a booming empire.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

While setting global psych allocation is one way of accomplishing a pop boom, by and large it is not the most efficient means to do so.

Unless you are running wealth and are looking to get a golden age to get to the magical +2 econ, 20% psych allocation strips a healthy amount of energy from bases with little efficiency loss and for those bases that are far flung and having significant efficiency loss gain precious little psych energy as a consequence of the inefficiency. Therefor you runthe risk of over committing the amount of psych you need in order to address teh far flung bases whilst throwing away perfectly good energy at your productive bases.

For this reason, psych specialists (doctors, empaths and thinkers, later on transcendi) IMO become the preferred means to quell drones as you can simply adjust the number needed on a base by base level to keep from drone riot without over adjusting a global variable. The global psych allocation simply is too much in certain base situations and too little in other base situations.

Again it all depends on the level of the game you play and the degree of micromanagement you are comfortable with.

OTOH if you have SMAX (with the Golden Age Pop Boom fix) you can use psych to enable a golden age, run Demo/Free market/creches with most factions and kick off a golden age pop boom. In this case the global allocation is normally a good thing as it allows you to pop boom whilst under the energy rich Free Market SE choice.

[Mongoose]

As far as GA booming goes, remember that you cannot get a GA in a base with a p-sphere.