T-hawk Plays Alpha Centauri

[T-hawk]

Forgot the saves, uploaded now. (BTW, it often happens that the last save from the previous session gets updated on the next upload. Last time I ended on 2190, then this time after loading 2190 changed some things before ending turn and saved again.)

Best guess is they thought big quantities of worms were too punishing. Although the odd thing is that it only applies to land mindworm units -- you have to kill Isles and Locusts one-by-one. One possible explanation is that the stack-kill is really a collateral damage effect that only applies to land units and always happens to come to 100%.

[Modo]

Quite funny that it ends up being a cash boost for the player. Yet another "punishing" mechanic to take advantage off...you'd think there's a lesson to be learned there.
And thanks for mentioning the saves, I'll get the updated "last session" ones again.

[haphazard1]

That is a LOT of mineral production.

I am still confused about how the crawler upgrade thing works. Is it just a way to spend energy more efficiently through the unit upgrade than you would get by directly rushing the SP? Or am I missing something else?

Thanks again for taking the time to explain all these things.

[Cyneheard]

I am still confused about how the crawler upgrade thing works. Is it just a way to spend energy more efficiently through the unit upgrade than you would get by directly rushing the SP? Or am I missing something else?

Secret Projects have a malus to rushing directly. And the fact that he gets to use midturn civic swapping to get roughly 2x the payout doesn't hurt either.

[T-hawk]

Yes, crawler upgrading is just more efficient in terms of minerals-per-money than directly rushing an SP. SPs cost twice as much as regular facilities (4 per mineral), doubled again if starting from under 4 rows of minerals (a situation that using a crawler skips), and doubled again if starting from under 10 minerals.

The civic swapping gives an effective multiplier of 11/7 in this case, which is an extra 56%.

That's a lot of minerals, and that's the blueprint to get there: build twice as many formers as you think you need, pop-boom, beeline Ecological Engineering and drill boreholes.

[Kofiman]

So that stack of worms, brough on by that Genejack factory, paid out enough to buy four more factories.

Eco-Damage is your friend, indeed.

Keep it up, T-Hawk, this is greatly enjoyable.

[Modo]

the blueprint to get there: build twice as many formers as you think you need

Luckily for us T-hawk figured the rest of if it too otherwise he might still be stuck in a loop in his first SMAC game building formers.

[haphazard1]

The advice on formers is good, though; I am realizing that I have not built nearly enough formers in my game. Boreholes take forever when you only have a couple formers available to work on them and don't have the Weather Paradigm.

The harvesting of energy from mind worm/fungal blooms is a pretty handy tactic. You have to have the units ready for them, though, or you can get hurt badly.

[T-hawk]

"It always takes more formers than you think, even when you take into account this law."

Formers are necessary but not sufficient.  It takes everything else too.  If you only build formers, you choke on support costs.  You need colony pods and to rehome the formers to spread the support, even with my easy answer here of Police State.  Then you also need to pop-boom to work 5 forests per base rather than two.  Then you can build enough formers to do boreholes.

Civics matter too: Police State looks morally bad and Democratic looks morally good, so players rush to the latter too soon. The support modifier in both directions is very significant. The Growth of Democratic looks like how you ramp up the snowball, but it's not enough of a modifier to outweigh the support loss until and unless it results in a pop-boom.

[yuris125]

Civics matter too: Police State looks morally bad and Democratic looks morally good, so players rush to the latter too soon.

A trap people fall into all too often. When I was playing my first games of Civ4, I refused to ever use Slavery, because it's 'wrong'