Why is a pop. boom helpful to you other than getting you #1 in pop.?????????????????

[tyler666]

OKAY I AM WONDERING THERE ARE ALOT OF FORUMS ASKING ABOUT HOW TO GET A POP. BOOM WHY DO YOU NEED A HIGH POP FOR WHAT DOSE THIS HELP???????????

Tyler Messer
"FOR I AM A NOOB"
[This message has been edited by tyler666 (edited December 08, 2000).]

[Rynn:]

here's my list (and I know there will be others):

1) your total population is one of the key components to your AC score
2) pops work your tiles, developing nutrients, minerals and energy
3) after size 4, pops can be turned into talents (librarians for research, docs for psych, engineers for energy credits, and various combos) - it's not uncommon in the later game to have a 50 pop city, all transcendii, with your city being fed by satellites and nutrient crawlers. Add the multiplying effect of the various research facilities and the research SP.s and you're cooking
4) being #1 or #2 in population means that you are a candidate for election as Planetary Governor, with all the benefits being elected to that position brings

Rynn


[This message has been edited by Rynn: (edited December 08, 2000).]

[tyler666]

THANKS RYNN FOR CLEARING THAT UP

Tyler Messer

[Sikander]

There are basically two forms of growth in SMAC, vertical and horizontal. Vertical growth is increasing the population within a base, while Horizontal growth is the result of founding new bases. Both are important, but both face some limitations, and most players rely on both forms of growth to maximize their potential.

Very early on, the easiest way to grow is horizontally by founding new bases. This is because very early in the game vertical growth is a diminishing prospect, that is to say that each time your base grows it takes longer to grow the next population point. There aren't many things to build very early in the game, and your best investment is usually a colony pod. Instead of having two population points in one base growing at a rate of X, you can make two bases growing at a rate of (X-1). This paradigm is limited by several factors, the most important being efficiency (both energy loss as you spread out from your headquarters, and the occurance of efficiency drones), space to plant new colonies, and time to walk your pods to a new base location.

As these diminishing returns accellerate, most players will find that it is time to switch gears from horizontal to vertical growth (exception: Borg or ICS strategy). Vertical growth has some advantages which really come into their own as the limiting factors begin to diminish horizontal growth. Among these advantages are:

1) The ability to multiply various production factors through the use of facilities. Two bases producing 2 econ each do not benefit from energy banks for instance, as there is a cost to build the Banks, and the net econ gained is zero at the end of the procedure. However, one base producing 4 econ which builds an energy bank will net itself 1 econ per turn. This rule applies to the zillions of facilities which multiply various factors of production.

2) Population nearer to your HQ loses less of the energy it produces to inefficiency, and has fewer problems with efficiency drones, which means it can spend it's energy doing something other than quelling drones.

3) Specialists can be utilized at bases larger than 4, which can really ramp up your labs/econ/psych, especially when you can use crawlers to bring in the food to support them. This can be HUGE.

4) The ability to Pop Boom (definition: Getting an effective level of 6 growth through SE settings, facilities and/or Golden Ages, which allows a base in this state to grow 1 pop per turn if it is producing 2+ extra nutrients) means that suddenly the vertical growth paradigm has overtaken the horizontal growth paradigm in spades.

Once a player hits the pop boom phase, he will very quickly run into a host of limiting factors, which may include the following:

1) Hab facility limitations
2) Drones
3) Ecodamage
4) Nutrient shortfalls

At this point the player may choose several options to continue his growth.

1) Increase the efficiency rather than the number of his citizens by building facilities.

2) Switch back to horizontal growth through peaceful means or conquest.

3) Concentrate on technology to remove various limitations in order to make possible another round of pop booming.

Usually, most players will do at least two of the above once they have hit their pop limits.

[MariOne]

Impressive clarity and up-to-the-pointness.
Nothing to add, thx Sikander.

[tyler666]

Thank you guys the information recived has been deemed most useful.

Tyler Messer
"For you guys are cool"

[Gothar]

I was thinking that it could be possible to ceate a kind of artificial pop boom using crawlers to bring in enough nutrients to allow the base to grow every turn. This probably would'nt work due to the support cost and the fact that once you take away the crawlers the people are likely to starve but it could be worth a try, what do you guys think?

[Sikander]

Gothar,

I don't think it is practical to expect to grow every turn this way, as the cost would be prohibitive. That said, high nutrient production is a decent way to grow your bases, though it gets very slow as they get big, and if your bases need a hab dome, you probably should just build the cloning vats special project, which gives you a permanent pop boom regardless of your SE settings. Take a look at DilithiumDad's thread dealing with Golden Age Pop booms for a nice alternative to the classic Demo/Planned/Creche method of pop booming.

By the way, crawlers do not cost support, which is a very good thing for me because I build a lot of them. My average city has 10 or more, usually bringing in nutrients or minerals. By the mid-game the only squares in my bases being worked by workers are boreholes and shelf squares which have been kelp farmed and tidal harnessed. What do I do with my people? They are all specialists (usually librarians or engineers). This solves several problems for me:

1) Drones, since only workers become drones, and my average base only has 5 workers, I only need a small drone reduction effort.

2) Inefficiency, the three problems with inefficiency are that it can cause beauracracy drones, loss of energy, and you cannot allocate your energy as you wish. Specialists don't lose production to inefficiency, they don't become drones, and they can be allocated as you wish between psych, labs and cash.

3) Free market economics, most players really want to run FM in order to make tons of money and have a high research rate. With all of my core bases averaging 11 engineers (before hab domes) I get huge amounts of cash and labs without having to deal with the limitations of FM economics. Thus my troops can be far from home exploring or sticking it to the AI, and no one complains.

Note: I play this way with the University, as their research is excellent and allows crawlers in the very early part of the game, and their extra drone for every 4th population means that I would rather have that guy specializing rather than rioting. Certain factions will have a good deal harder time using this strategy, especially early due to tech limitations. If you plan to use forests, fungus or sea squares for a large amount of your production don't bother crawlering them, since a crawler can only move one type of production at a time. So use crawlers on Rocky-Road-Mine squares and Condensor-Farm-Soil Enriched squares where they will be able to take full or almost full advantage of the productivity that your terraforming has created.

[DilithiumDad]

Excellent thread. There is one downside to high population. Population is the main factor controlling your "might" on the power graph. Sometimes you want to rein in your pop growth to avoid freaking out your opponents. Both AI and human factions may try to gang up on you and take you down when your power bar gets too high. IN single-player, the critical point is when you are two times stronger (ie have twice the population) of the #2 faction. At that point, every AI faction will declare vendetta except devout pacifists like Morgan (and sometimes Morgan too!).


------------------
Creator of the Ultimate Builder Map, based on the Huge Map of Planet

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

D-Dad,

You are corect sir. Early might in terms of population can cause you issues. For this reason, alone I have taken to staying (perhaps too long) in a FM non GA pop boom mode. It's bad enough that wealth offends most factions, but to add to that a significant population advantage and the AI can get down right surly.

When going FM early and spending all income towards rush building facilities and crawlers, I tend to spread horizontally not vertically. I know at any given time doing this I can turn a pop boom (or GA pop boom if appropriate faction) and make up lost ground very quickly, but I normally forgo this as long as the others have techs and are friendly enough to trade with. Staying FM/wealth then allows good research rates and the pop boom phase normally happens when I feel I have used up anything the AI may have to offer. If there are one or two techs out there at that point, thats what probe teams are for.

I must say though I am loath to trade techs as long as I am beelining to my priority techs those being IA and restriction lifting (moreso the former than the latter) as I do not want any delays to aquiring these critical techs.

If I have delayed the boom long enough, I'm but a tech or two away from cloning vats anyway and at that point the issue is moot.

It's kind of like laying in the weeds and acting less powerful than what you are, but what the AI doesn't know will hurt them

(Sometimes you almost feel sorry for the AI)

Og

[Sikander]

D-Dad, Ogie,

Good points about diplomacy and the powergraph. Sometimes I am in no position to upset certain AI factions who have concentrated on weapon techs while I have prepared for a pop boom. Rather than drive them into a war wih me, I will try to involve them with someone else, while I play military tech catch up. Once I have enough defensive tech, or they are up to their eyeballs in a war elsewhere I can afford to pop boom safely. Of course it kills me to have to wait, especially if I don't have anything nearly as productive to do. Most of my best games are those where I started a good distance from everyone else, and could leap ahead with no worries about the AI.

[mark13]

I always thought it was technology, to be honest - that being the reason the UoP are so high in the early game....I have seen AI factions declare vendetta right after I had pop boomed, but thought no more of it....it wasn't exactly out of the blue, at any rate....

On the subject of artificial pop booms - I presume you have worked this in civ2 - that works a treat, getting your cities up to astronomical sizes very quickly indeed....but the ineffectual nature of nutrient convoys from other bases in SMAC would seem to rule out this idea. Not that I've tried it, though - having said that, it probably works brilliantly...

[The Commodore]

I don't realy like pop booming.I like to control my people...I hate drones,at the higher levels they are hell...the one exception is with telipathic matrix/cloneing vat combo...is bad news to get theCVs if you don't have the TM.

[mark13]

Assuming you have a reasonable amount of energy coming in, drones will cease to be a problem, even at transcend, if you allocate 20% or even 10% to psych. Later on in the game, drones don't have room to become a nuisance - you have so many transcendi they get drowned out in the really big bases....

[big_canuk]

I always feel you need two things to pop boom, and avoid drones. 1. Crawled nuts, so that you can create 2. specialists. Try to stop thinking about pop booms as a way to get extra workers. Your extra "workers" need to be supply crawlers, and you extra population need to be specialists.

If I miss the HGP, and the VW, then I may end up with bases that have only 2 or 3 workers and many, many specialists. It only takes a few crawlers on nuts, to give you great amounts of labs, and/or energy via specialists.

[Googlie]

Right on, b_c

And don't forget sea crawlers - if you put a kelp farm on a sea nutrient square, and if that base has the aquafarm improvement, the resulting pop booming is awesome - and turn these extra pops immediately into librarians/empaths/transcendii according to your tech status at the time

(and do the same with the ocean energy squares - build tidal harnasses on them and crawl the energy to a coastal science base and watch the multiplicative effect take hold)

G.

[mark13]

I don't tend to use crawlered nuts in, to be honest - maybe I should start, I don't know. I seldom use specialists either - I usually just build a tree farm, rec commons (assuming I have the VW) and jack the psych up to 20%. This is more than enough to quell any drones, and pop boom - what with the 2 nuts being brought in by each worker....

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

M13 et al.

The beauty of crawler/trawlers. I like to think of it as the ability to maximize output of a given square or set of squares. you'll find as you specialize you get more out of a given set of squares then you would otherwise.

Take for example a fully developed Size 16 base with Hybrid forests and recycle tank. This base will be delivering the following under normal econ situations.

base square - 3N-2M-2E
16 forest squares - 3N-2M-2E
Totals - 51N-34M-34E

Not considereing orbital improvements then the base consumes 32N to support the population leaving effectively 19N (free and wasted)34M-34E

Now consider the 20% psych and youve got 19N-34M-27E (assuming no efficiecny loss)

Contrast this with a crawler/trawler approach
Where 50% of the population is specialists (thereby still allowing golden age if you so choose)

Using Nutrient crawler/trawler (SMAC not SMACX so all crawlers/trawlers bring in 3 nuts)

Base square = 3-2-2
Workers = 8 yielding 24-16-16
Population requires - 32
Shortfall = 5 nutrients or 2 crawlers @30 mins each

Assuming Librarians base output is

1 free nutrient - 16 mins - 16 E + 24 E (labs from librarians) = 40 E

To bring the base on par with respect to mins add 4 crawlers on roaded, rocky mines. So for 6 crawers at 30 mins each you have devleoped that base equivalently to a size 16 hybrid base and have nearly 50 percent more energy to show for it. Whats more is you have used less squares in doing so.
(8 workers, 6 crawlers/trawlers, 1 base square vs. 16 workers and 1 base square or 15 vs 17).

I like to think of this a specialization of resource harvesting complementary to specialization of population. Meaning that you set to harvest single high yield resources by crawler that which will yield the best single resource. In mid game then this is a kelp farm (for SMACX aided with Aquafarm facility), rocky roaded mines ( I always work a borehole if possible), and tidal harness. Once soil enrichers come into play a condensor/farm/soil enricher is a beautiful motherlode of nutrients for but a single crawler.

Towards the mid to late game energy is what drives the game not mineral power. Anything that improves your energy output is a boon and specialization through nutrient harvesting is a key to that energy production. In fact I'll attempt to maximize my specialist ratio (normally to about 50% of base population again to allow golden age and +2 econ while running Demo/Green/wealth) through nutrient harvesting before I consider going onto conventional energy trawlering (energy trawlers of course being aided by +2 econ).

Og