A Yang Question

[knowhow2]

I have a question about our dear friend yang. In my current SP game playing Yang my SE settings are police state and planned with all the pluses but without any minus! I get +2 growth and +2 industry from planned -0 effiency, police state gives me +2 support and +2 police and once again no minus for effiency. Is this normal?

[knowhow2]

BTW,

I also have Wealth, that one gives me the normal results.

+1 economy, +1 industry and -2 moral

[SnowFire]

Yup, if you check the .txt files you'll note that Yang has impunity to negative efficiency, turning Yang from one of the better powers to one of the best (and also allowing you to play Yang somewhat realistically).

This isn't in version 1.0 of the game, so you're either playing patched or the Mac version though.

[knowhow2]

okey, thanx.

[Alinestra Covelia]

Okay, I haven't played any other faction to advanced stages of the game in the same way as I've played the Hive, so this is something that I have never witnessed in its normal state. I have a few questions to ask about how to Pop Boom.

I gather that with all the factions except Hive and Morgan, you can Pop Boom simply by getting a SE Growth rating of +6. However, I also read that with the Hive and Morgan you can still make a Pop Boom by SE Planned or Demo and the allocating everything into Psyche.

I've just halted in my conquest game and decided to give this a try. However, after a few turns nothing special happened (except that Tech rather predictably stagnated and Econ went to pot). I checked on the cities and there was nothing I could do to make the citizens happy enough with specialists to start a Golden Age.

At this point I was implementing "Yang Expansion" (bases 3 squares away from each other) and also with HQ base as largest, at 11 population. Was it too late for me to have even a remote chance of getting this to work with a large sprawling empire?

What are the ideal conditions for a Yang Pop Boom, and what facilities/terraformings would you do to make it work?

[mark13]

Yang is, for the reasons described above, the hardest faction of the 14 to pop boom. At a bare minimum (IMO) you will need the HGP, Rec commons, Hologram Theatre (or Net Node with VW), Research Hospital. IN addition to this you should have a maximum of 40 bases (assuming huge map) to control bureaucracy drones.

As you have said, this is not usually ideal. A much better idea is to do it rather earlier in the game, when you have fewer bases, which should get your productivity high enough to wage war at a effective level.

Just my opinion though - I'm not exactly a Hive expert

[Walt]

Someone enlightened me that the GA pop boom doesn't work in SMAC multiplayer. It may also not work in SP SMAC. Don't know. As for getting a GA in the first place, boreholes are your friends. Even then, you'll only pull it off in very high energy bases.

[mark13]

Oh yeah, of course, forgot to mention that - GA pop boom only works in SMACX, and not SMAC. Which is a real pain - the number of tiomes I have tried it in SMAC are numerous....

[Blake]

You can't pop boom Yang using pysch specialists, you need to make almost the entire population of your base workers, then crank up pysch to about 30%-50%, it is VERY difficult to get more than 50% of your workers talents, so that's why you need your entire population to be workers. Then also have some police units to ensure that no drones appear. Boreholes are godsends, and don't even try pop-booming until you have tree farms, you'll probably need tree farm facilities and several worked tiles producing 4+ energy per base. And don't expect to be able to pop-boom past about size 11 unless you have the HGP. All that said pop-booming can be very worthwhile for yang, and best of all doesn't require an SE switch.

Bummer it doesn't work in SMAC though

[Misotu]

For AXT029, expansion - not pop-booming - is the key

Seriously, I don't know much about Yang. But I think we will lack a Hive pop boom in that game until we have Eudaimonia. By which time, we have won - or lost - the game

You simply have to rely on Yang's natural facility for growth, and oomph this up as much as you can with kelp and aquafarms (in SMAX). Otherwise the penalties are too high to make the attempt worthwhile ...

Edited to add: Of course, if you happen to have the Jungle ...
[This message has been edited by Misotu (edited April 29, 2001).]

[mark13]

Whilst concurring with a lot of what Misotu has said, I cannot help feel that a Hive pop boom could make him a massive force in the early/mid game. For instance:

The average size 3 base will churn out 8 minerals per turn. However, the average size 5 base will churn out 12 minerals per turn - if every base were to be subjected to this, that is a net gain of 50% minerals per turn. Of course, with the Hive, this needs no SE flip-flop at all, and you won't have any problems with the drones at all, due to police - this increase would effectively cost 2-3 turns income/RPs. Which, at that stage, isn't a lot....this could make the Hive a major player with all the SPs floating around, or become the base for something of an uber-army. Or even, turn them all into specialists early on, and get a load of tech....

[Alinestra Covelia]

I only ask this because I'm playing a Hive SMAX singleplayer game against really powerful factions with everything set to highest difficulty. The factions I'm playing against are all factions that can outstrip Hive abilities in almost every area - Drones to present an industrial rival, Gaians/Cult to present an explorational rival, and Univ/Consciousness to present serious techological rivals. Lal was also in there because I figured he would hate me anyway. All factions were set to Aggressive.

Well, I strapped on my Conquistadorean boots and walked over the fully human factions, making peace with Dee and subjugating the Cult (everybody else was killed off). However, the final remaining faction - the Consciousness - was extremely powerful by the time I got round to fighting with them, and had they been controlled by a sensible human player I would probably have been defeated or fought to a standstill.

It was at this point that I read Vel's strat guide and realized I had absolutely no idea how to pop boom whatsoever. FOrtunately this appears to be something that Aki is similarly hampered by (with her piddling -1 to Growth) but all the same, a pop boom would have helped.

In any case most of the SP that boost psyche are with Aki, so the answer is in the question, really. Time to crush some silicon implants.

[Horus]

I seem to miss something important here (basically a manual), but why do one need so much energy in the bases to pop. boom with (not energy in general, in order to counter the psych investement, as I understand it). +2 nut/turn/boom is of course important. But I don't understand why you need so much energy. Have I misinterpreted something or?

And, are Yang really more difficult to boom with than Aki?

[Walt]

quote: Originally posted by Horus on 04-30-2001 09:20 AM I seem to miss something important here (basically a manual), but why do one need so much energy in the bases to pop. boom with (not energy in general, in order to counter the psych investement, as I understand it). +2 nut/turn/boom is of course important. But I don't understand why you need so much energy. Have I misinterpreted something or? And, are Yang really more difficult to boom with than Aki?

In short, you need energy to be turned into psych, which will give you the Talents you need for a Golden Age, the only way to pop boom with Yang until the advent of Eudaimonea.

And yes, it's more difficult to pop boom with Yang because, although he runs with no efficiency penalties, Aki has efficiency bonuses that allow her to worry less about drones arising from horizontal growth.

Walt

[Horus]

Thanks.

[Blake]

Actually I'm not convinced it is easier to boom with Aki, police state has the support and police bonus over demo, allowing for a bit of extra drone control which can just allow you to pull the GA off, especially in larger bases.

Btw, with yang you really can't consider a case of pop-booming a size 3 base, you need a lot of infrastructure in order to execute the pop-boom, I would say a holo theatre and treefarm at minimum, and your bases will probably be size 5+ to take advantage of specialists. The HGP does make it a lot easier, especially to boom smaller bases more distant from the HQ, but I also find the HGP is not an easy SP to get, compared to the WP. Also if you intend to pop-boom you need to spread your bases out more than usual Yang style, I tend to favour "distant" infrantry spacing favoring 3 tiles vertical or horizontal rather than "close" infrantry spacing, 2 tiles vertical or horizontal. Also I plan my city layout in advance so I can fit a maximum number of boreholes per city.

Another advantage of pulling off a pop-boom is when running police power you get basesize units supported per base, a well executed pop-boom would mean you could pretty much forget about ever needing clean reactors, when you have 14 units supported per base..., lets just say you don't want to be yang's neighbour after he pulls of a pop-boom.

[Viriato]

I don't have SMACX so I my comments are based on plain SMAC only.

Yang cannot pop-boom in a Golden Age due to a bug in the game. There is one way to do it though, building a Secret Project (I don't remember it's name). Unfortunately this SP comes relatively late in the game, and Yang is not a good research faction as you know.

There is also a technique I've heard of. If you build the SP that makes your bases start at size 3 you can build a base, assign a few crawlers to it and start producing colony pods. With proper work you can get a CP every turn, or every 2 turns. When the last citizen is converted into a CP and the base is lost you simply build it again.
This is obviously not the same as a pop-boom but it's the best we can manage with Yang.