Specialist cities

[bondetamp]

Sikander:

I'm not quite sure why you adress me with that, but thanks anyway

Adam_Smith
If each crawler has the potential to carry home 13+ nutrients, this means that two crawlers may be enough to support a base upp to the point where it gets hab domes (and even further, as you get nutrient pods before that). This means that you can place bases one apart, and still have them gow to imense sizes. But his also means that if a chopter or two comes by and take out 10-15 crawlers, you will have starvation n seven or eight of your bases, for several turns, until you can get another 10-15 crawlers up and running. And a wyrm attack can do the same thing.

A couple of interceptors and AAA garisons is a small price to pay IMHO.

[Adam_Smith]

bondetamp,

Yes, that would be quit a disruption. I've never had such a disruption, but I usually use crawlers for minerals and energy only. Well, some for food. I've never run a specialist base though. At least not one with all specialist.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Bondetamp, et al.

Don't sweat the loss of crawlers if a stray chopper takes them out. So you starve a little big deal. The great thing about specialists unlike mineral producing bases for units etc. is that even under starvation conditions (and here I do mean starvation not merely hunger situations) is that the econ or research is still contributed. Lets them starve or hunger for a turn and then get a fresh crawler back out there. No interuption to you research or energy production. Demo Planned again and your back up to full population. (Now on the other hand if choppers raids become an every turn situation you'll need to deal with it post haste but for the short term it's no biggy. Also since this was a Single Player tactic, I find the AI is woefully inept about creating let alone using an airforce to any degree. Choppers especially. AI seems to love needlejets but choppers is another matter. A much more devious player would wipe the crawlers then go about bombing the terrain improvements or worse yet lobbing a fungal missile your way ouch!!)

On a seperate note, I've been playing the Data Angels in a land grab for the Monsoon jungle with 'Borg' style specialist city approach. The ability to produce meaningful mineral output to supply the needed crawlers is making the pace a bit slower than I would like. I'm at 2200 and have just gotten 5 cities to max size all specialists. I'm now thinking of replaying the game from 2122 on to put forests down every where to aid the buidling of initial crawlers. Additionally I'll forego the switch to Demo/Planned/creches until such time as I can get a few pre made crawlers (I'm thinking 3 per city on mines and road where possible else boreholes) bringing in some much needed mins outside the Monsoon Jungle before paving over the whole thing using farms and condensors. (ahh Urban sprawl and all the concrete err.. mean farms)

As far as SE selections go this approach offers some unique features. No efficiency loss so no need to max out your efficiency. Planned or Free Market becomes the preferable SE choices. As far as drone control goes, if you start with all specialists fromthe beginning your growth is only as fast as you crawlers get inplace. realistically I have had to short cut the equation and put some workers in the field b/c I couldn't make crawlers fast enough. In fact I think I'll go completely over the top and run Police/Planned/Wealth so I can churn out a few more supported formers b/c again efficiency isn't needed. (This is something I wouldn't even dream about doing except for Yang but in this case it can work for any faction. Hmm... have to see if Data Angels are averse to Police or Power can't remember)


All in all a reasonable first attempt worth more consideration and fine tuning.



[This message has been edited by Ogie Oglethorpe (edited March 13, 2000).]

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

One other interesting tidbit,

Normally in a builderesque fashion once I get past Industrial Auto I'm trying to beeline to tree farms. With this approach, energy restrictions become significantly less important. Now the bee line is towards fusion (as it should be if you plan to go a-conquering). It allows some interesting changes in your whole tech development approach. I think it still is quite important however to ensure those mineral restrictions get lifted in order to have some ability to churn out the needed crawlers and ultimately R&D facility upgrades.


[This message has been edited by Ogie Oglethorpe (edited March 13, 2000).]

[bondetamp]

Adam Smith:

If you use crawlers primarily for minerals and energy, wouldn't it still be a disruption?

Firstly you loose the crawler, so you have to build a new one. That is some minerals right there.

Second you have to get it out to the resource. As the crawlers that are farthest away are the ones likely to get smashed, this can take a considerable amount of time. If we are talking boreholes on top of mineral resources, we are talking 8 resources lost every single turn, from the crawler is hit to a new crawler is back on the spot. If building/ shipping takes five rounds, this equals 40 minerals. Enough for an interceptor IIRC.

As the support- and unhappiness factor of the interceptor must be accounted for as well, I don't think I would use air support for single crawlers. But if three or four crawlers were stationed within a few tiles of each others, the cost of an air base, a sensor and an interceptor could very well be worth it IMO.

The same prinsiple goes for energy- and nutrient hoarding crawlers. The cost of the crawler is insignificant, but the loss of production while processing can be considerable.


-b
[This message has been edited by bondetamp (edited March 14, 2000).]

[Adam_Smith]

quote: Originally posted by bondetamp on 03-14-2000 11:29 AM Adam Smith: If you use crawlers primarily for minerals and energy, wouldn't it still be a disruption? -b [This message has been edited by bondetamp (edited March 14, 2000).]

I would say that loosing nutrient production would be the biggest disruption if you end up loosing population for it. Minerals would be second because with out minerals it's tough to build another crawler. Energy loss is the least disruptive. It is easy to just build another crawler and get it back out there for energy, and it wont be much of a set back.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Been giving this some thought.

Loss of Nutrient crawler - Net effect will be eventual loss of population point. Not a huge immediate concern if you have nutrients in the tank (i.e. you normally run a small excess of nuts.). In fact worst comes to worst if and when you can't get a crawler out to replace it one could put the worker back out to the field to bring in nuts. and run in a small excess to fend of starvation for a time then pull it back into the base as a specialist(s). If for some reason the amount of workers you need to place inthe field is enough to cause drone rioting a simple every other turn approach will still keep you operating without pop loss.


Loss of energy crawler - this doesn't seem germaine to this topic moreso it goes towards talking about effectively protecting an energy park as I was making the assumption that if I was going to crawler in energy it would be fairly distant from the Monsoon jungle.

Loss of mineral crawler - This seems to me to be a bigger issue in that it will stimy the Monsoon Jungle tightly spaced cities growth.


Just my thoughts

[bondetamp]

I'm planning on, in my next game, to try the (drum roll) "Extreme Specialist Approach". This would include spacing like this:

cxcbcxcbcxcbc
cbcxcbcxcbcxc
cxcbcxcbcxcbc
cbcxcbcxcbcxc
cxcbcxcbcxcbc
cbcxcbcxcbcxc
cxcbcxcbcxcbc
cbcxcbcxcbcxc

where b=boreholes,
c=Farms+soil enrichers+condensers and
x=bases

The figure will be expanded as new pods are built, but kept small as I figure you get the picture.

Each base will thus have three squares available. Two nutrient producing tiles and one borehole.

There will be only one worker in each base, the one working the borehole. Crawlers will take care of the two nutrient squares.

The crawlers will thus be able to support a population up to seven (6+6+3) or more with nutrient squares.

as efficiency will not be an issue, I'll run planned, to get the industry- and population bonus and police state to support the hordes of formers I'll be needing.

The uttermost ring of bases will have more than three tiles available, which is fine as they need to build and support a garrison. The inner bases will not really need a garrison, as any enemy would have to slash their way through an endless horde of crawlers (to be upgraded as soon as my sensors see from where they are coming) to get to them. Something that will buy me time to build a garrison, or crush them (the enemy, not the crawlers) with my choppers.

After a while I will stop expanding at one spot, just expanding around it.

This will make a figure like this:

cxcbcxcbcxcbcxcbcxcbcxcbcxcbcxcb
cbcxcbcxcbcxcbcxcbcxcbcxcbcxcbcx
cxcbcxcbcxcbcxcbcxcbcxcbcxcbcxcb
cbcxcbcxcbcxcbcxcbcxcbcxcbcxcbcx
cxcbcxcbcxcbcxcbcxcbcxcbcxcbcxcb
cbcxcbcxcbcxcbcxcbcxcbcxcbcxcbcx
cxcbcxcbcxcbcccccccccxcbcxcbcxcb
cbcxcbcxcbcxcccccccccbcxcbcxcbcx
cxcbcxcbcxcbcccccccccxcbcxcbcxcb
cbcxcbcxcbcxcccccccccbcxcbcxcbcx
cxcbcxcbcxcbcxcbcxcbcxcbcxcbcxcb

etc...

The hole in the middle is for crawlers to support larger and larger bases. Maybe I should put some boreholes there too, to make the inner cities produce SP's and Sky hydroponics.

This whole concept, of course, requires a rather large continent.

Well, I haven't had the time to actually try it yet. Do you think it could work?

[This message has been edited by bondetamp (edited March 14, 2000).]

[Adam_Smith]

bondetamp,

sounds pretty good. I've used the base every 2 spaces strategy. It works pretty good. I'm still into 2 spaces between bases though.

One thing that I've found is that once someone takes one of your bases they easily take very many of your bases since they have no garrison and they are so close together.

Another thing is that you show up high on the graph early, and people really hate that and they will immediately plan your demise.

[bondetamp]

Adam (may I call you Adam? )

Take a look at the figure again. Imagine every single 'c' as being a crawler. Now imagine me uppgrading most of the crawlers facing the enemy to best armour. Imagine me having a chopter or two standing by.

I severely doubt he'd be able to take *that* many bases before the retaliation.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Bond (Is that Bondetamp, James Bondetamp? )

I think your on the right track. I recently ran a game as UoP since I figured it wouold be extremely helpful to have the freebie network node and since drones are an issue of the past it seemed the perfect faction to take this approach out for a test drive. It worked quite well. The sprinkling of boreholes being worked by workers was a good way to juice the hole thing up. In that game I was three squar spacing though and trying for size 16's populations and work a minimum of 2 - 3 boreholes. Realsitically all you ever need to get to though is size 5 so you can specialize other than doctors or empaths.

I like the tight spacing approach and smaller city approach (sound like we are migrating to David Byron's 'Borg' style approach) the nice ty of this is no need for efficiency. Police/planned will work nicely.

Post your results please as I would be interested to know your impressions.

Oh one last thing if for some reason you've decided to include the Monsoon Jungle in your grand designs, I suggest that you try to make that the central all "c" areas. It was occurring to me in my latest Data Angels game I was actually squandering the resources of Monsoon Jungle by putting so many bases in it. I should be looking to crawler each and every square for nutrients instead of taking up value squares as base sites.
[This message has been edited by Ogie Oglethorpe (edited March 14, 2000).]

[Enigma]

Very innovative approach.. high on terraforming time but comparable to an energy park. It is nice in that it also gives you minerals at each base. All I have to do is a little compare and contrast though..

I would like to put this in the simplest turns possible..
essentially this layout calls for a 2:1:1 condenser/farm/soil enricher to cities to borehole ratio.

Thus it is fair to say that on average each square gives you a little less than 4 food.. meaning 2 population. 2 population means 6 base lab points.

On the other hand an E park would give you on average 5 base energy per square.. every other square has 10 divided by 2.

Both use the same amount of crawlers, I.E. every other square.

an E park needs a city every 16 squares.. this layout needs one every 4 squares..

If my calculations are correct and you are taking the energy from crawlers to super science cities then an E park would give you superior labs, and good energy compared to the specialist city idea.

Plus it takes much less colony pods meaning fewer drones lost to inefficiency.

Neither plan loses energy to inefficiency.

I really do not have the organizational skills to compare and constrast this in an orderly manner, these are just obserbvations. And if anyone here would like to see a painstakingly built energy park that I spent 6-8 hours moving formers with... email me and I will send the turn.

[Christopher]

The annoying part of this?
I ususally play against Bondetamp and he allways beat me.

Could you guys stop giving him this tips for superior strategy?
Tell him to build only one city and then build that to a maximum before getting a new one...I hate loosing against him. He is so smug whenever he wins

Christopher

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Nigma et al.,

Additional points of comparison

Pros:

1)Two specialists in the beginning game net 6 labs or equivalent of 6 energy. At fusion power a reconfiguration of specialist to engineers will net 2*3 econ + 2*2 labs. for a net 10 equivalent energy. (granted it is a reduction in lab output but the cash can't be taken for granted). All this is in comparison to averge energy output from an energy farm yielding ~5/square (crawler).

2) As Bond points out susceptibility to outside invasion chopper raids should be markedly reduced. Instead of a sprawling energy farm outside your core cities that would require response to attack from outside stationed forces or worse yet your cities a much quicker response should be achievable to an attack in this model. Finally when and if the attacks come on your crawlers you should have some level of nutrients in the tanks to 'weather the storm' and not cause an immediate cessation to your lab and cash rasing efforts by the specialists. Contrast that to a chopper attack on your energy farm and the moment that crawler is destroyed you lose the energy income.

3) Complete flexibility in all SE choices. Drone management should be minimal to keep one citizen working a borehole and maintain 6 specialists i.e. you probably don't need any psych facilities. While this isn't an issue per se for the science/HQ city it will be for all the other cities within your empire.

Cons:

1) Super science city takes advantage of one set of all the science enhancing facilites. Maintentance costs are a one cost item at this city. This approach multiplies the amount of facilites by the number of cities in order to max out science rate. Now consider the amount of minerals required to establish all those facilties in the first place.

More thoughts later......
[This message has been edited by Ogie Oglethorpe (edited March 16, 2000).]

[Adam_Smith]

The advantage that I see to Bonds strategy, which I have used something similar and been very successfull, is that you get a very fast start because you build more bases in the beginning. You get the resourse boneses from the bases and faster growth. His terraforming options also seem productive.

I like to have much more production at my bases though. You can have as much production with supply crawlers via transporting minerals. However, I believe that having workers on forest is better than supply crawlers, because you get the nutes and energy too. Ultimately, a good pop boom at a base with space to grow and a tree farm is going to better for your faction in most cases.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Nigma,

Great point on the sattelites! 13 food sattelites will net you 7 population points which in terms of energy production is 35 energy (assuming engineers) per city that's almost 3 times the effect of a energy sattelite (and they come much sooner so you can start earlier). (Who needs energy sattelites that net you a +1 energy/city and is subject to efficiency loss when you can have return like that on food sattelites. Plus now that I think of it you don't need to worry about those damned solar flares wiping them out. I'm semi-kidding here you'll want energy sattelites but they become the lowest priority after food then minerals then ODP's then energy sats.) If only Nessus mineral sats could come sooner.

Regarding defense issues. My point on the defensability of the crawlers comes from an assumption that within the city sprawl you'll have a interceptor or two that will be able to scramble on defense, not so in the E park unless you follow the suggestion of an outside airbase but that takes up valuable square real estate. Now following Bonds advice going forward and upgrading those crawlers to best armor/reactor you've got a veritable swamp of hardened targets that should slow any offense, hopefully enough for you to counter.

My other point though was to contrast the immediate loss of a crawler in an E - park to a crawler lost in the Food Interior. E - park loss means immediate loss of energy. Loss of Food Interior crawler may mean nothing if you can replenish your crawler in time before you starve down 1 population point.

Your point regarding ease of replacement from mineral rich cities is very much on the money. The one thing this strategy doens't address well is overall loss of production power. OTOH you should be rolling in energy with your hordes of engineers contributing cash allowing for rush builds as needed.

[bondetamp]

Ogie-Boogie:
First: As the pronunciation of 'de' is close enough to 'the' that I'll use it, and 'tamp' is Norwegian (and originally Dutch, I believe) for 'short rope end' there is three obvious choices.

1. [James] Bond the [short rope end], a plausible, if somewhat cryptic alias.

2. [James] Bond the [end] [to all enemies, of the world, of the line (this is rather cunning, as line can mean rope), of the good time, of sanity, of any hope for a good/polite/sensible/sane/tasteful discussion]

3. Farmer boy (which would be a translation)

Second: If I find the Monsoon jungle during my expansion, it goes without saying that it becomes an 'all-c-area'.

+++++++++++++

Enigma
first: As far as I can see, your dilemma 'Super-Borg' Vs 'E-park' assumes that one excludes the other.
Why not do both? I can see no reason not to alternate the 'all-c-area' with an 'E-park'. Assuming, of course, that you have a large continent to spread out on.

Second: You're right. Only four nuts per square. This will take the population up to five. Enough to get specialists. And for further growth, what do you think those 'all-c-areas' are for?

Third: About # of pods, and drones lost to inefficiency: Drones are hardly an issue in specialist bases.

++++++++++++++

Ogie:
Third The facilities maintenance cost is a factor. With all lab- or econ enhancing facilities (biology lab; energy bank; fusion lab; hybrid forest; network node; research hospital and tree farm) you get a $16 output. You also get +200% on both research and income. Two engineers will take care of the expenses as well as net an extra $2 and 12 research. Assuming a population of six, you’ll have three librarians as well, netting 27 research, totalling 39. Energy harvested by workers are not counted. This will be affected by faction (free network node for University) and SP’s (free energy banks with whatever the name of that SP).

The expanse I’m planning will be far less rapid than traditional Borg. I will try to get an area terraformed ready before putting a base there. If I build Boreholes first, this gives the uttermost bases an extra borehole each, a kick start in other words. In the ‘all-c-area’ I will put down a couple of boreholes as well, so the bases on the rim have a bit extra production. These will, of course, be the ones building SP’s and prototypes.

You need to take into account that you don’t need rec. commons or hologram theatres. Nor do you need VW, Human Genome or other such SP’s. You should not spare any expense to get WP.

It could be an idea to put a crawler on the borehole. This would free a worker who could become an engineer, netting 5 energy. More than I would get on the bases some distance from the head quarter, as police/planned is assumed. This crawler does not need to be from the closest base. If one base is done building improvements, rotating crawlers could be a good idea. In fact rotating crawlers should be a vital point of the defence strategy. That way when someone takes one of my bases, the three crawlers next to him doesn’t disappear as well.

+++++++++++++++++++++++

Adam:
A forest square with tree farm + hybrid forest gives 3+2+3=8 resources. Farm + condenser + engineer gives 9. This number will grow with time, as soil enrichers and better specialists becomes available.

The philosophy behind this approach is to harvest the resources from somewhere else than the base squares, to give a compact and easily defendable whole. The theory is neither complete, nor actually tested. It seems like I never get the time to actually play the damn game anymore.
So I might be wrong. This whole idea may be ludicrous. And please point that out, because if the theory doesn’t stand a debate, it will probably be doomed from the start in an actual game.

So there.

+++++++++++++++++++++++

Enigma:
Satellites rock.

+++++++++++++++++++++++

Ogie (again! Don’t you ever get tired?)
I tried to address the point about production earlier in the post. But you are probably right. With this approach I get zounds of adequately producing bases, but no ‘super bases’ to produce SP’s prototypes etc. by straying a bit from the path, and putting down some extra holes, this could be remedied. As new cities are built, taking over those boreholes, the crawler moves to the next one, being completed by a former team the very same turn. The point here seems to be to have the formers preparing squares ahead of time.
Of course with mining stations, this cease to be an issue, but that is too late in the game.

[Christopher]

What I would like to see is a comparison to this strategy and the "forever expanding" strategy...
Could they be used in conjunction?
What are their weaknesses, strength etc?

For us "not as masterful as others" players such tips are really helpful.
How about a first-ring, second-ring tactic?

Start out as forever expanding, then change to Bondetamps tactic when you have achieved a fair number of cities, but do so only in your inner cities, when your seconday cities have built a new ring of expanding cities they switch to specialist cities.

This give a advantage of freeing the formers that you used in ring-one. I.e the formers follow the everexpanding ring of specialist cities. As soon as one is ready it continues to the next city who then switch strategy..etc etc.

Christopher

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Bond et.al.

This whole topic has my interest peaked as few others have. So on with further discussions. (no not tired yet, just bored with my job )

I definitely see the benefit of keeping ahead by predrilling your borehole and putting down crawlers ahead of time. Doing so will also lead to little eco damage as the boreholes are outside city radii.

The 4 nutrients in time become 6 after soil enricher tech so a max of 14 (actually 15) population is psosible with the appropriate food sats. (6+6+3 matched by 15 sats)

Since this strat is inherently mineral hindered, I see benefits for any faction that has an inherent production and/or support bonus. I'm thinking Yang would be a good choice. Obviously UoP works (but that comes as no surpirse b/c UoP is a natural excellent builder faction).

Lastly, putting a crawler on a borehole. I hear what your saying about having yet another crawler to act as a defense, but unless your running a 100% energy loss efficiency (i.e. Police\planned on any faction other than Yang) I don't see that using that crawler in that fashion gains you that much. Better off gathering some real resources from the all "c" section or out to the outermost boreholes where you can another 6 mins. It occurs to me by sending these to the outer boreholes, when you set down your next city a simple rehome and reassignment of that crawler to the food farms for the new city and your off and growing the new city.

That's it for the night. Time to actually try some of these ideas. Think I'll start with Domai and take advantage of Police\planned with his industry he should be least affected by low minerals.

[Enigma]

The issue of increased costs to build these bases is definatley an issue. I always start an energy park about 10 years after I get magtubes, because otherwise the distances are so large I waste large amounts of time getting the formers there. Not only do you have to build much fewer bases with an E park but you can convert THOSE bases to pure specialists, build a base on top of an echelon mirror and build farms on the mirror squares, if you have enough food sattelites then that base can have a large amount of specialists.

I disagree with you about defending an E park, because I have magtubes and ridiculously high production at that point the AI is ridiculous. It offers no resistance. I assume we are talking about SP here because in MP the game would never last this long.

But here is another thing that affects the super late game with your specialist city idea: SATTELITES!!!

With every city getting +1/+1/+1 for every population point this can massively increase the capability of your bases.

For example at the initial 6 or 7 population you gain 7 more of each, meaning about 15 minerals and 15 energy at a base that uses only 4 squares. Quite efficient.

And then once these sattelites take affect you can reach a population of 14!!!
Add a hab dome here or there and a few extra crawlers feeding off more condensor/farm/enricher squares and you can have huge amounts of specialists.

The sattelite issue really makes me reconsider the Specialist Cities idea more. However, the main thing against this is the huge investment in minerals and energy for all the facilites and all of the extra colony pods and all the extra terraforming turns.

Plus the fact that the cities add production while an E park doesn't is also nifty.

Unfortunatley I have no clue how to calculate how all the facilities increase your energy, so I can not do a direct comparison but this looks favorable especially since it increases production.

The sattelites really make this an even more feasible approach.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Gave this a mini test spin last night. But instead of a best case situation using Domai or Yang I decided to take a worst case using an Industry hindered faction i.e. the Spartans. All in all I like what I saw again room for improvement as I learn more.

(firstly I was playing Thinker not transcend, Large Random mostly land, average everything else)

Bond the end of all _____'s excellent borehole, condensor farm, base arrangement layout works well. One SNAFU happens though once city sizes of 5 are obtained and number of cities exceeds bueracracy limits. If one does not have a unit acting as police the one worker on the boreholes is a drone (drat drat drat).

I passed on building Human Genome and VW so no help there. I was trying to run police to get the extra support so that each city was supporting 4 formers. When I went to Demo for pop boom the 2 extra units would drain the minerals too much for my tastes. Eco damage on cities was about 3-5 not too bad. (DIdn't get around to building tree farms)

Built WP and Transit SP's and Energy Grid(?) began working on empath guild. Stopped play at 2190 and was on the verge of fusion. I wasn't playing a speed game but think this could have easily been accelerated.

Once Industrial Auto comes along it took ~ 3turns per crawler and within 2 crawlers i.e. 6 turns/city you were set and beginning building infrastructure beginning with nodes. (I forgot just how many artifacts the Spartans get by cruising the continents).

I have no real reference to say that this is a superior approach but think it is comparable in the early game and has good potential for late game.

Number of cities was about 16 of which 80% I'ld say were maxed at size five with crawlers in place. 60% of cities had Network nodes. 30% had research Hospitals as well.

Tech was 5 turns/tech.

Terraforming was slow. By the time I had 8 cities down and forested everythin at first until WP was built (I think I made a mistake here and should have gotten WP built ASAP by cashing in some artifacts) I had a lot of catching up to do. In fact was still catching up and could not get ahead to predrill my boreholes for future city sites. In one instance I was able to but when I put a crawler on it from an interior city eco damage was pretty high (35ish) Again no tree farms of hybrids at this point.

Anyway that pretty much was it.


[This message has been edited by Ogie Oglethorpe (edited March 17, 2000).]

[bondetamp]

I'm giving it a spin right now.
University on huge map with big landmass.
Found Monsoon jungle, bigger than my screen, just next to start point.

Also foud Angelz.

This means I have to go for some weapon tech to chrush them before being able to colonize properly (they're just too damn close).

As Ogie is doing a 'worst case scenario' with the NRL, I'm trying out a somewhat better faction. I suppose that'll be helpfull in evaluation.

[Christopher]

ha! yeah right....
you always plays UoP 'cs you like em so much.
...and because you whop my behind with em...

But more serious on the matter, I tested this strategy with Drones. Starting of with the ususal Borg strategy and then making an inner ring of specialist-cities. What I found was that I had to make a few more boreholes than what Bondetamp recommended.
But I find this to be my habit of building strong with the Drones. Appart from that I was very happy to see police powers come into my hands. I had the same problems with drones only they happened much later and wasn't really a problem, more of a nuisance.

I haven't played very long(hey! its late and I am tired)so I can't say for sure how I like it, ButI noticed that it takes quite some time to get the formers and cities ready for a specialist-strategy. It is a mid-game strategy not an early-game strategy.


Christopher

P.S:
Has anyone any experiences with support?
(for the game, not Apolyton)
I have sent so many mails for such a long time and still no answer! *disappointed*
D.S.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Have now tried this approach with the good Chairman. It's pretty sweet. He has police to start so you start with the ability to crank out 3 formers and a police unit prior to support issues. I'm now at 2210 and my tech strat was to get Formers first then bee-line to Industrial Auto then Beeline to Ecological Engineering concurrent with beeline to Fusion Power. Fusion Power absolutely is a must. Once you convert your 4 specialsits to all engineers you have cash to burn. I've rush built almost every research enhancing facility and genejack and am now going to start building an energy park. Techs are every 3 turns with energy income at 300+. Not bad considering it's Yang but could be better. I haven't made contact with all the factions yet as all this internal improvment has made my focus very builderish and not expansionist. Number of cities is 20 but next round of expansion is under way. All terraforming is complete. Had a brief run in with Cha Dawn but was able to simply ignore him by upgrading selective formers and crawlers to fusion armored trance. Stupid AI kept throwing small boils and laser speeders at me and kept getting chopped up without a single loss of mine. Finally decided to teach him a lesson and two Gatling laser (don't have missile tech yet) fusion reactor infantry units wiped him out. He's down to one far distant base that I'll get around to eventually.

Tree farms are coming in handy and am now beginning work to make hybrids as well. With tree farms I am starting the process of sending crawlers out to mines on rocky roaded distant site. I chose to mine these areas b/c it becomes a huge expensive Pain to attempt to level out the elevation around these distant areas. With 1-2 mines and 1 borehole and genejack I have the majority of my bases are 20+ minerals with no eco damage. Once I bring Hybrids online I should be able to get that up to a more respectable 30+ in short order. By that time hopefully I can bring online some robot factories and have some killer bases.

My plan going forward is to amass a goodly amount of cash (I think I'll need ~3500 credits) and upgrade all my infantry formers to armored clean superformers, therby allowing me to start my war building efforts.

So far I have been most pleased with the progress of Yang's faction. In this particular case I think it helped him out. I have to date no landmarks so all this was on normal terrain.

Now realistically since I was pretty much unmolested I had the luxury of concentrating on internal improvement. If faced with a more immediate threat I likely would have geared up war efforts and made a beeline for missile tech and air power.

All in all I like what I see for Yang at least. It gives him the much needed energy in the late 2100's if you can get fusion by that time.

SP's include:
Weather Paradigm - Naturally
Virtual World - Allowed me to do away with police unit is later cities and make 4 formers
Hunter Seeker
Planetary transit
Datalinks
Longevity Vaccine - Perfect now for second round of expansion with no drones
Under construction:
Ascetic Virtues
Planetary Energy Grid


Passed on:
Command nexxus
Maritime
Citizen Defense

Missed:
Human Genome
Empath guild

SE choices: Police/Planned/Knowledge

Typical Base: 1Worker 4 Engineers

1 excess nut.
8 minerals + Genejack and 1 -2 mines = 18 - 24
8 energy

Typical Facilities:
Net Node
Research Hospital
Fusion Lab
Childrens Creches
Free perimeter defense
Gene Jack

3 bases have command centers and 1 has bioenhancement as well.

[This message has been edited by Ogie Oglethorpe (edited March 21, 2000).]

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Bond,

I agree Yang seems to be ideally suited for this approach. Timing as to when to stop Borg expansion is something I too need to focus upon. I think Borging with Yang is realistically a decent approach in any event. I tried to stop expansion just before the second beuracracy warning. Now that SP's like Transit, Longevity, and Ascetic are in place expansion is resuming.

In regards to Gene Splice, the nicety of this approachis one can forgoe aquiring this tech for the short term. With the condensors and farms 4 nuts are available w/o Gene Splice. unfortunately it sits smack dab in the way of getting Eco Engineering for needed mineral restriction lifting (plus the Research Hospital are a nice to have). I agree full heartedly that the following techs are the ones I found most critical:

Industrial Auto
Eco Engineering
Fusion Power (damned if there aren't a lot of useless tech to get this though)

Of course as you expereinced with UoP a decent start position (as in any game) makes all the difference. Unmolested growth opportunity makes up for a lot of sins of play.

[This message has been edited by Ogie Oglethorpe (edited March 22, 2000).]

[bondetamp]

I'd say that Yang is probably better suited for this approach. Trying to build an axtensive infra structure with Santiago seems close to the notion of drinking plumbo for kicks.

My game with the University, has gone the wrong way all together, and I'll probably have to start over. (*grumble* bloody Angels *grumble* stupid probes *grumble* I'm going to show /you/ who is boss, ***** *grumble*)


On another note, I'm also somewhat unsure where to start my game. Wheter to go for a full 'Borg' approach in the beginning, untill I have, say 20+ bases, and then go 'super-borg' or if I should start earlier.

On one hand, by starting as regular Borg, I get a good number of bases, from which I get a decent amount of cash and tech each turn.

And tech is important, as there is little you can do before you get at least industrial automation for crawlers and gene splicing for nutrients.

On the other hand, by consentrating to much on expansion the first fifty years, or so, you risk never being able to catch up to the expansion former vise.

This can be fine, but makes for another game than the one portraied in this thread, where formers are supposed to be one or two moves ahead of the expansion at all time.

Oh, well, back to the game. Let's see who is boss this time.

[bondetamp]

I finally got enough time on my hands to play a long game of SMAX. I started out doing the routine, but due to being a lousy player, it is hard to see how effective the strategy is.

On thing struck me, though. As soon as my headquarter finally reached six inhabitants, I made my first librarian. I then proceded to make the rest of the inhabitants librarian, but, alas, it could not be done!

It seems to me that only the specialists you create from inhabitant #6+ can become anything else than a psych producing doctor. (max five librarians in a city sized ten, etc) Is this so, or have I missed something crucial? Of course this is rather important as I then have five workers to cope with rather one, which means my lay-out doesn't work at all!

Other than that, I found the layout to be marvelous. I'm pulling in research faster than ever, and money problems are a thing of the past.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Bond,

That seems very strange. The inability to convert all 4 of 5 pop to librarians wasn't something I ran into. OTOH I was racing toward fusion and wasn't so much concerned with getting to size 5 as much as borging. When fusion came along I was making 4 of 5 (sounds like a borg name) into engineers and ultimately 6 of 7 (she has larger breasts than 4 of 5 but not quite as big as 7 of 9 just in case your a Star Trek Voyager fan ).

So maybe I didn't actually run into the librarian issue b/c I was borging with smaller sized bases.

When you get fusion let me know if you still can't convert all but one to engineers.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Bump

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

bump