How much vig?

lbores · February 20, 2001, 14:40

'Vig' or 'vigorish' is an oldtime street term which refers to the surtax or fee imposed to complete a transaction (think bribe).

It also relates to how much things are worth - a problem which plagues all beginning SAMC players. Basically the question is not only what I should pay but what are things worth.

Firstly, in CivII, you could count on every caravan/trader disbanded in a Wonders-building city to be worth 50 shields. What are crawlers worth to an SP build? That is, how much energy is applied? It seems to me that the turn-in value of a crawler is variable. And is the rate at which SP's are built related to the energy or the minerals at a base? Is that value related to how many turns (minerals) it takes to build it? Or ... ?

Next - are comm links valuable and if so what should I pay for one? Why are they valuable?

What should an upgrade cost? Is it better to upgrade several levels at a time or notch it up? I ask because for one 2-lvl upgrade - the price was going to be 110. I decided to notch up by one which cost me 50. When I checked to see what the next upgrade would cost - it was 90! Hence, it looked like the AI wanted a vig of 30!

KMadeleine · February 20, 2001, 15:16

Other folks use crawlers more than I do. I do know that on upgrades, if you're eventually going to want to upgrade a unit all the way up, then go ahead and do it now if you have the money. Because if you do it in two steps, it always costs more. What I usually do is upgrade old rovers to be amphibious rovers with good weapons; amphibious upgrades usually only cost 10 credits more than the same weapon without amphibious, and you never know when the ability to attack from a ship will come in handy.

Comm links can be quite valuable if the faction you contact will make good trades, or establish treaties. I love the Empath Guild so I don't usually need to buy links, but I do buy them sometimes. I sell them to others when I think they'll meet soon anyway, so I might as well get some credits out of it.

Chowlett · February 20, 2001, 19:49

quote:

Originally posted by lbores on 02-20-2001 01:40 PM
Firstly, in CivII, you could count on every caravan/trader disbanded in a Wonders-building city to be worth 50 shields. What are crawlers worth to an SP build? That is, how much energy is applied? It seems to me that the turn-in value of a crawler is variable. And is the rate at which SP's are built related to the energy or the minerals at a base? Is that value related to how many turns (minerals) it takes to build it? Or ... ?

Quite simple really. Each crawler has a number of minerals it takes to build (strictly number of mineral rows, but hey). When you assign a crawler to a SP, that full mineral value is added to production - in other words, more advanced crawlers give more minerals (in general, reactor levels tend to decrease the minerals-to-build). Therefore, a Chopper Photon-armour Trance Empath for example will provide a much larger boost than a simple infantry crawler. As an aside, since upgrades cost less than the 4 e.c/mineral needed to rush a SP, your best bet is to build a large number of cheap, vanilla supplys and upgrade them.

quote:

Next - are comm links valuable and if so what should I pay for one? Why are they valuable?

Yes - assuming early game, which we will be, if you don't have the commlink of the faction in question this means they are not near you. Therefore, either you will gain a treaty and possibly a few techs, or a war with a smallish faction miles away. This is almost always in your favour. Plus, you can only convene council (=get yourself to governor) if you have everyone's commlink. Expect to pay (I think, I haven't bought one recently, but I know they sell to the AI for...) 50 e.c.

quote:

What should an upgrade cost? Is it better to upgrade several levels at a time or notch it up? I ask because for one 2-lvl upgrade - the price was going to be 110. I decided to notch up by one which cost me 50. When I checked to see what the next upgrade would cost - it was 90! Hence, it looked like the AI wanted a vig of 30!

IIRC, there was a huge thred in the past couple of months (read "back to about June", I have a long memory

) debating precisely how upgrade cost related to change in unit. I'm fairly certain that one of the poins was indeed that it's better to upgrade all at once. I'll search for it for you...

Skanderbeg · February 21, 2001, 06:14

I have learned that if You buy techs from another factions, the price depends on the money You have.

For example, if You have 1000 energy and want to buy a tech from another factions, it will cost maybe 500 or 800 energy.

But if You use most of your money for rush-builds before contacting the faction, until You have, for example, only 200, and then ask to buy, they will only demand 100 energy.

So it's not good to aks for buying techs with full pockets.

Chowlett · February 21, 2001, 08:33

Found it! See "Another Question of cost".
[This message has been edited by Chowlett (edited February 21, 2001).]

RedFred · February 21, 2001, 18:26

I would recommend against armoring your air units.

As far as the rovers go, best attack plus 2 or 3 defense is often not too expensive. "Too expensive" depends on your SE especially your support rating. If I am Morgan I'll tend to build expensive units but if I am Yang or Miriam I'll just go for numbers. You may want to add a 1-x-2 rover to your rover rush team, where x is your best defense. Totally useless for attacks, it can provide decent defence for your rover stack and keep up with the team without being too pricy.

lbores · February 22, 2001, 01:07

quote:

Originally posted by Chowlett on 02-21-2001 07:33 AM
Found it! See "Another Question of cost".
[This message has been edited by Chowlett (edited February 21, 2001).]

Thnx for the bump - which msgs help. But the whole process can get expensive. For example - I was upgrading my Recon Rovers until I got to the point whre an original re-designed RR was priced at 200 in the Workshop whilst the upgrade was 180! It seems that the credits already poured into a unit is essentially devalued and there's a point where upgrading makes very little sense except in terms of time.

Speaking of Rovers - do any of you design then with armor and if so how far? It seems that with a lvl of 2-3 they can take a reasonable beating. Which armor lvl is more economical? That is, where cost begins to be a factor. It seems to me that even unarmored - a hoard of these suckers can wreak havoc. I hardly ever armor my needle jets for example. Killer bees!

lbores · February 22, 2001, 11:01

quote:

Originally posted by RedFred on 02-21-2001 05:26 PMYou may want to add a 1-x-2 rover to your rover rush team, where x is your best defense. Totally useless for attacks, it can provide decent defence for your rover stack and keep up with the team without being too pricy.

Here is a pearl of great price!!

MariOne · February 25, 2001, 11:56

Indeed, like discovering hot water...

lbores · February 25, 2001, 12:43

quote:

Originally posted by MariOne on 02-25-2001 10:56 AM
Indeed, like discovering hot water...

Hot water? Wazzat!?

MariOne · February 25, 2001, 12:55

Seriously now, to help summarize.

Mineral value of units.
Any existing unit can be converted back into minerals.
This happens when you disband one in base.
Normally, you can only exctrat one HALF of the mineral value of the units.
The mineral value has to be determined with the CURRENT Industry SE settings, and is applied to the CURRENT base production.

A Special Case: Crawlers.
Crawlers can be "cashed in" instead of disbanded.
That is, you can obtain the FULL mineral value from a crawler, but ONLY WHEN cashing it into a Secret Project or a Prototype.
Cashing crawlers in other Items is really just disbanding them. As well, turning in any other unit into a Project or Prototype, is just normal disbanding.

The mineral value of a unit is fixed in terms of mineral ROWS. A Basic crawler will ALWAYS be worth 3 ROWS, and that's what you obtain when you cash it in.
But the actual # of minerals depends on your Industry SE settings, i.e. on how long is a mineral row at cashing moment.
Example: you produce a crawler at 0 Industry. You have to put in (somehow) 3 rows of 10 minerals, i.e. 30 Minerals. You later cash it in a Project. You get back its full mineral value, 3 rows. But if at that moment you have +2 Industry (that is 8 minerals per row), the minerals needed to *build* a crawler will be less (3x8=24), and the same value you'll obtain cashing any crawler in, regardless of its original value at the moment you produced it.
Producing more complex crawler will let you have more worthy crawler, but only becauzse you had to SPEND more minerals to create a more complex unit.
For instance, a basic Foil Crawler costs 5 rows. When you cash it back in, it will yield 5 rows. It will yeld more only because it costed more in the beginning.
And you have to decide whether it has a sense freezing a grater mineral cost into a single unit, which will have to work out in the field and thus be vulnerable...

Then there's a tactic: you can build basic crawlers at the cost of 3 rows. When needed, you pay some ec to upgrade it to a more complex model, only to increase its mineral worth before you cash it in. I leave to you to determine when this is cost-effective...

Upgrade cost:
(Weapon_increase + Armor_increase + New_rows) *10
it's that simple
Only thing you have to pay attention to, it's that the value of the unit you're upgrading is not taken into account.
Whether you upgrade from a plain 1-3-1 (2 rows) or from a Trained Police 1-3-1 (4 rows), you always have to pay 70ec if you want to obtain a plain 4-3-1 (4 rows for the new unit, +3 weapon increase).
the increase in armor and weapon are costly intead.
The best unit to upgrade *from* would be one with the best trade-off between a significant weapon/armor level and cheap price; and of course NO abilities you'd have to pay for.
Example:
You want to obtain a Drop 4^-3-1, cost 6 rows.
If you upgrade:
From a 1-1-1 (1 row), you pay (+3+2+6)*10=110ec
the same for a trance or police infantry.
From a drop infantry 1^-1-1 (2 rows), you pay THE SAME 110ec
From a 1-3-1 (2 rows): (+3+0+6)*10=90ec
From a 4-1-1 (2 rows): (+0+2+6)*10=80ec
From a 4-3-1 (4 rows): (+0+0+6)*10=60ec
Having any kind of ability on the starting units will only increase their original cost, but won't take a cent out of the upgrade costs

Finally, let's see what happens if you upgrade in notches.
We said that from a 1-1-1 to a 4^-3-1- you pay 110ec.
You HAVE a 1-1-1.
From a 1-1-1 to a 4-1-1: (+3+0+2)*10=50ec
From a 4-1-1 to a 4-3-1: (+0+2+4)*10=60ec
From a 4-3-1 to a 4^-3-1: (+0+0+6)*10=60ec
So, when you know that you'r gonna do a bigger upgrade later, intermediate upgrades are a WASTE OF MONEY. Don't do it, unless you desperately need the intermediate unit at a given moment.

If you instead have to produce the starting unit yet, my personal choice would be to produce the 4-1-1 for an extra mineral row, but paying only 80ec for the upgrade sparing 30ec.

Blake · February 26, 2001, 19:55

Whats peoples thoughts on building 1-1-x,trained units for the sole purpose of upgrading and hence getting a free morale upgrade?

I've taken to designing a unit called PROTO for every unit class (Infanty, Infantry+Bombard, Rover/Hovertank, Needlejet/Chopper, Chopper+SAM, Foil/Cruiser) equiped with the fission reactor and high morale. I then upgrade the unit to whatever I want, and despite the fact the new unit isn't "high morale" it still gets the full benefit, working the other way upgrading a normal unit to high morale doesn't help it's morale.

Thoughts? And is this considered cheating in MP?

hellrazor · February 26, 2001, 20:01

As far as cheating goes, I would say this is pretty marginal. I've noticed the same thing, if you upgrade a high morale unit it doesn't lose that advantage even if the new unit doesn't include high morale. I think the bother and cost of having to ungrade the unit makes the small gain of one morale level pretty minor. And sometime you need to upgrade a unit with high morale to something else later. I wouldn't consider it cheating.

Sikander · February 27, 2001, 01:34

I call my unit (1-1-1 Trained) Basic Training, and they are really handy. You can crank them out every turn, and there is no rush to upgrade the unit. They start out elite, which is really a big advantage since for infantry units it doubles their movement rate. Plus elite units take on worms just fine whether they have all that anti-worm gear or not. I build a training model for every type of chassis.

Chowlett · February 27, 2001, 08:24

The reason High Morale works like that is that it simply increases the morale of the unit by one at time of building. Simple as that. It only happens at building, and it's a permanent effect.