I admit, I'm a sprawler

Sarxis · January 8, 2003, 10:44

I can't help it. Even though I try to pack my initial bases in tight, I tend to have the most landmass in every game I play. Maybe I need to play as Yang and try a compact aproach.

Alex · January 8, 2003, 14:05

I used to be a sprawler too, but then I played as Yang... oh the delights of a cluttered landmass!

Main_Brain · January 8, 2003, 14:46

I tend to CREATE the biggest Landmass ;=)
Nothing like the WP and some Formers :=)
ICS is not Evil

Asmodean · January 8, 2003, 19:17

In my current game, as in all my games, I sprawl to my hearts content. Count me in on the sprawling team

Asmodean

Alinestra Covelia · January 8, 2003, 22:57

Only recently I began to play the Hive in the archetypical despot way. Cluttered bases three, sometimes two, squares apart, repealing the Charter and nerve stapling, declaring war on neighbors and pummelling them into Planet Busted submission...

It makes a change from the Benign Dictator motif and is plenty good fun to boot.

gwillybj · January 11, 2003, 18:21

Fly away! Disperse! Spread abroad! Cast thy seed upon the winds!

Quote:

Further, God blessed them and God said to them: Be fruitful and become many and fill the earth and subdue it. (Genesis 1:28)

Heed thou a warning, those who cluster!

Quote:

They now said: Come on! Let us build ourselves a city and also a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a celebrated name for ourselves, for fear we may be scattered over all the surface of the earth.
Accordingly God scattered them from there over all the surface of the earth, and they gradually left off building the city. That is why its name was called Babel, because there God had confused the language of all the earth, and God had scattered them from there over all the surface of the earth. (Genesis 11:4-9)

My head hurts a lot today.

Xian · January 11, 2003, 19:29

Im weird, i play a paecful fun loving yang or domai with sprawling builder style

What are the advantages of cluttered bases? I HATE it when bases have overlapping resource tiles!

I just learned how to use crawlers and oh my god

Gibsie · January 11, 2003, 20:07

What's wrong with sprawling?

Hendrik · January 12, 2003, 03:02

Spreading your bases apart may be more fun, but except in some extreme cases it is far from ideal.

Normally packing your bases in tight (2 square spacing works for me under almost any situation) has many benefits. You gain a lot of terraforming efficiency, putting your formers in gangs nets you terraforming time, and having to terraform fewer roads/sensor arrays means you formers spend more time making tile improvements that net you factors of production.

A smaller, less spread out empire that is productively dense is much easier to defend than a sprawl. 2 square spacing means an infantry unit can move between 2 cities in one turn, or a rover between 3 cities in one turn.

Since each city is closer to your empire, efficiency gains tend to outbalance the fact that each city will be producing less energy (not all the time!)

Since each city is much closer together, your colony pods will spend less time roving around and more time being productive as cities. This means your empire will be up and running much faster.

Basically packing your cities tight generates turn advantage, which can be used in multiple ways. It doesn't matter if your opponnent has a marginally better midgame, if you reach your *slightly* less optimal midgame 20 years earlier than him. Having secret projects etc. earlier can make your cities more productive in the long run anyways, and being ahead on tech and build queues because of turn advantage means that your cities will very rarely be less productive than a non packer during a given year.

I basically have gotten used to using multiple approaches to gain productivity. Extra population not working tiles is usually a *good* thing. Specialists are extremely useful.

Yang and Morgan tend to be ICSers much more than other factions because of their difficulty at pop booming, but I still pack in my cities as other factions. Extra pop just means more specialists...

If you want to see some extreme city packing check out Sikander's style in the thread he posted, he spaces them one apart vertically and two apart on the diagonal, each base only has 7 workable squares in the middle. Each of his individual cities is actually MORE productive than any comparable strategy in terms of lab and energy output than almost any other strategy at certain tech levels.

star mouse · January 13, 2003, 06:05

Quote:

Originally posted by Main_Brain
I tend to CREATE the biggest Landmass ;=)
Nothing like the WP and some Formers :=)
ICS is not Evil

Lol, a man after my play style ... My current game, I have these inconvenient islands on the map, so I'm using my Clean Fungicidal Fusion Rover Formers to connect them all up so I can build the maglev network from hell. Someone's attacking me there? I'll just move all my units from waaaaaaaay over there and BOOM!

Jac de Molay · January 13, 2003, 13:32

I like to sprawl, but I also like to have a well-defined, distinct continent that is separate from other factions. I will even terraform down to achieve this desired effect, especially if Yang or Miriam is around.

Alinestra Covelia · January 15, 2003, 11:52

Quote:

Originally posted by gwillybj

Fly away! Disperse! Spread abroad! Cast thy seed upon the winds!

Funny, I thought God specifically frowned on masturbation.

I wonder what thoughts Sister Miriam has on the matter.

She doesn't strike me as the sort of person who would have much of a choice, if you catch my drift.

CEO Aaron · January 15, 2003, 23:38

I used to be a consumate sprawler, I didn't want any overlap space between my bases, period. After perusing Sik's ultimate builders game, however, I am working to pack my bases in tighter. I'm currently using a 3 square grid to lay my bases out, and its working quite well. Many others have already pointed out the merits of tighter base spacing, so I won't go into that here. The one difference I _have_ noticed in my play style is I'm much more aggressive about creating landfill to accomodate new city sites.

Sarxis · January 16, 2003, 02:31

The other consideration is the inefficiency from excessive numbers of bases. I tend to not have a huge problem with that, because my bases capitalise on their unshared land.

Quote:

Only recently I began to play the Hive in the archetypical despot way. Cluttered bases three, sometimes two, squares apart, repealing the Charter and nerve stapling, declaring war on neighbors and pummelling them into Planet Busted submission...

It makes a change from the Benign Dictator motif and is plenty good fun to boot.

Thing is, a real life Yang wouldn't think of that as being tyrannical.

Fido Dido · January 16, 2003, 17:56

Quote:

Originally posted by star mouse

Lol, a man after my play style ... My current game, I have these inconvenient islands on the map, so I'm using my Clean Fungicidal Fusion Rover Formers to connect them all up so I can build the maglev network from hell. Someone's attacking me there? I'll just move all my units from waaaaaaaay over there and BOOM!

Heh heh, just like me then.. I once made a maglev tube that circumvented the entire map... Of course that meant lots of terraformers working both ways to raise the land, and plant sensors..

Alinestra Covelia · January 17, 2003, 02:36

"Labia" already is the plural.

I guess the singular would be "labium" but I'm having a hard time envisioning that.

Just thought I'd point this one out.

Sikander · January 17, 2003, 03:11

Quote:

Originally posted by Alinestra Covelia
"Labia" already is the plural.

I guess the singular would be "labium" but I'm having a hard time envisioning that.

Just thought I'd point this one out.

In the rarely heard sexual organ plural department, how about scrota? That one makes me chuckle.

As for the topic at hand, I like to dense pack my bases. There are a few reasons why, but the main reason was that I liked to use the power terraforming like boreholes and condensor farms, yet by the time I was able to use all of those nuts (ie hab domes) the game was over. So I shot for a system that would support a base of 16, which is the hab limit for most factions if they build the AV.

Now I can get maximal productivity out of the land that I have, which isn't only critical on small maps or when you are on a smallish island or continent, but comes in handy most of the time. I find that sprawled bases take a long time to set up, and are harder to defend, especially before airpower. Of course when I decide it's time to do a little AI attitude adjustment I end up with a lot of bases sprawled all over creation. My tendency is to make the AI submissive and then give them their crappy bases back, or sometimes give their bases to other more productive AI submissives.

Alinestra Covelia · January 17, 2003, 13:13

Yes. Recently I was playing a game as the Hive on Transcend and I decided to pack all my bases with "Yang expansion" (thanks to Vel for the term). It's surprisingly good - the population growth bonus is fully used and it's very easy to defend. Of course, if you have the Planetary Transit System, it's a very powerful tactic.

Kirov · January 17, 2003, 15:17

Quote:

Originally posted by Alinestra Covelia

Funny, I thought God specifically frowned on masturbation.

I wonder what thoughts Sister Miriam has on the matter.

She doesn't strike me as the sort of person who would have much of a choice, if you catch my drift.

Capt Dizle · January 18, 2003, 01:58

Quote:

Originally posted by Sikander

In the rarely heard sexual organ plural department, how about scrota? That one makes me chuckle.

As for the topic at hand, I like to dense pack my bases. There are a few reasons why, but the main reason was that I liked to use the power terraforming like boreholes and condensor farms, yet by the time I was able to use all of those nuts (ie hab domes) the game was over. So I shot for a system that would support a base of 16, which is the hab limit for most factions if they build the AV.

Now I can get maximal productivity out of the land that I have, which isn't only critical on small maps or when you are on a smallish island or continent, but comes in handy most of the time. I find that sprawled bases take a long time to set up, and are harder to defend, especially before airpower. Of course when I decide it's time to do a little AI attitude adjustment I end up with a lot of bases sprawled all over creation. My tendency is to make the AI submissive and then give them their crappy bases back, or sometimes give their bases to other more productive AI submissives.

You definitely have a convert in me. I tried your setup in the CGN SP Challenge and I really enjoyed it. The only downside is the problem with setting up a SSC but depending on the terrain that might be doable.

The Mad Monk · January 18, 2003, 02:55

I like a nice, orderly dominion. Bases placed in a grid, always exactly three squares apart (if it won't fit, by Planet, pile on the formers and make it fit!), boreholes on the diagonal adjacent squares of every base, roads strictly n-s and e-w, and harvesters on each and every single crossroads that isn't a base.

It looks great from orbit!

Hendrik · January 18, 2003, 15:53

The CGN challenge is the game with lal vs a bunch of AIs pacted together with pre-existing boreholes and bases right? That game was somewhat tough for a time, I was behind the AI tech wise for a loong time. But I finally managed to catch up right as the AI was reaching transcendant tech, and transcended.

I wasn't able to use any crawler intense strategies due to intense AI air raids on my crawlers.

Sarxis · January 18, 2003, 21:37

Quote:

Originally posted by Alinestra Covelia
"Labia" already is the plural.

I guess the singular would be "labium" but I'm having a hard time envisioning that.

Just thought I'd point this one out.

What are you talking about?

I wouldn't talk about -labia- on a family site like Apolyton. Think of the kiddies!

Mongoose · January 18, 2003, 23:48

Quote:

Originally posted by Hendrik
The CGN challenge is the game with lal vs a bunch of AIs pacted together with pre-existing boreholes and bases right? That game was somewhat tough for a time, I was behind the AI tech wise for a loong time. But I finally managed to catch up right as the AI was reaching transcendant tech, and transcended.

I wasn't able to use any crawler intense strategies due to intense AI air raids on my crawlers.

Must have been a different game, Hendrik. In this months' challenge, the only victory condition enabled is conquest.

Alinestra Covelia · January 19, 2003, 01:25

There's nothing wrong with talking about labia on Apolyton.

Heck, if you even want to talk at all, you've got to do so through a pair of labia anyway. (Unless you're Stephen Hawking, in which case your lips don't come into the question at all.)

I take a lab for my teaching assistantship at my college, and it's the 1A class. Thus my office door has a sign saying:

Alinestra Covelia - LAB1A COUNSELOR

* ~ * ~ *

[/threadjack terminated]

The Mad Monk · January 19, 2003, 06:15

You really should put that in your location field.

star mouse · January 20, 2003, 03:56

Quote:

Originally posted by The Mad Monk
I like a nice, orderly dominion. Bases placed in a grid, always exactly three squares apart (if it won't fit, by Planet, pile on the formers and make it fit!), boreholes on the diagonal adjacent squares of every base, roads strictly n-s and e-w, and harvesters on each and every single crossroads that isn't a base.

It looks great from orbit!

Your games must look an awful lot like a crossword puzzle.

CEO Aaron · January 21, 2003, 06:49

Yes, the grid formation _can_ look a bit odd compared to a more organic base alignment, but the power of the grid is not to be trifled with. For a bit of planning and aggressive terraforming, your defensive power is multiplied many times, allowing you to defend more with less, or, if pressed, create a colossal roadblock toward the advancing enemy. With sensors under all your peripheral bases, and reinforcements only 3 squares away, you can stall all but the most overwhelming advances long enough to crank out more defenders.

Ivellios · January 27, 2003, 10:42

I'm also a sprawler, and there's nothin wrong with it

I just like my cities to work at their fullest potential. Having bases close together does bring a few advantages though. Units can go from city to city much quicker, which is one heck of an advantage when you're being attacked (tough this is also true using Mag Tubes, but it's nice in the early stages of the game). You'll also produce less minerals (less space to harvest), so eco-damage shouldn't pose a problem.

I almost always use a 'grid'. It's orderly and looks tidy. There are 4 spaces between bases, so the bases can use all the 20 available spaces for harvesting. The four spaces 'wasted' in the middle of a group of four bases are used by Supply Crawlers to harvest Nutrients from a Soil Enricher + Condensor or Minerals/Energy from a Thermal Borehole. It all depends on what my city needs and what terrain is available (obviously, I won't put a Borehole over a Nutrient bonus).

Method · January 27, 2003, 13:00

Quote:

Originally posted by The Mad Monk
(if it won't fit, by Planet, pile on the formers and make it fit!)

i've been foiled too many times by monoliths. think about it: howcome formers can tear down mountains or alter rainfall patterns, but they can't bulldoze a big pole?