The hab cap is hard, except for one probably-a-bug: a colony pod can merge more population into a base even past the current hard cap. It's not really worth doing though; by the time you've spent 90 minerals on three pods, you might as well have built a hab complex anyway.
A short update chronicling the population boom, although it was long in real time.
In 2157, I raised the psych slider, so that all the Golden Ages began at the start of turn 2158. I issued former and unit movements as usual, then laboriously micromanaged all the bases. Each base followed a checklist that went 2 food, 3 police, 4 psych. The 2 food booms each base from size 3 to 4, then the 3 police (counting the police infantry model as double and upgrading original patrols to it as necessary) and 4 psych will maintain the Golden Age for another turn. I switched supply crawlers from forest minerals to food when necessary. Note that you can move a crawler and then click on it again to activate the convoy order even after it's out of movement. At the end of year 2158, I successfully boomed 8 bases from size 3 to 4 without losing the Golden Age.
2159: The leading bases will boom from size 4 to 5 this turn. Now the checklist becomes the 2 food, 3 police, and 8 psych because that's needed to maintain the GA at size 5 as per my earlier example. Now the psych slider had to go all the way to 100%.
Each turn I had to choose whether to keep the psych slider up, or drop it once enough bases were constrained by food that they wouldn't boom. But there's actually a turn lag on that thanks to the processing order that I described. Any Golden Age begun or continued this turn causes a boom two turns hence. I need to project two turns ahead for whether each base will have enough food to boom at that time, including whatever new farms and supply crawlers it will have by then. So each turn I scrolled through every base and noted each of 1) would it have food to boom this turn, 2) could it hold Golden Age (separately from whether or not it actually boomed), and 3) if it did hold GA now, whether it could boom NEXT turn.
At the end of year 2159, out of 9 eligible bases, 3 could boom and stay in Golden Age for another turn, 3 could boom but couldn't accumulate enough psych-energy to hold the GA, and 3 didn't boom for lack of food. Two of the last category could boom one turn later with the addition of a farm or supply crawler, plus one base is also growing to size 3 this turn with GA and can boom on the following turn. That adds up to a total of 6 bases that boom at the end of 2160 if I keep the psych slider up on 2159, so do it.
2160: The same deal came together one more time: keeping the psych slider at 100% would start or maintain Golden Age at 6 bases this turn for them to boom next turn. One base used the trick I mentioned before: it couldn't work enough energy so it fell out of GA this turn, but could restart the GA with doctors and then boom on the following turn.
One detail was that I ran out of money. My maintenance costs are 14/turn (that's the 12 Creches and the 2/turn loan payment to Morgan), but my income is zero with the entire slider on psych. I had to sell Gene Splicing to Morgan for a paltry 25 credits, cheap but the alternative was bankruptcy.
Another detail was that I was finding less food than I'd expected at the core bases. What was missing was the supply crawlers that I cashed in for the HGP, which no longer existed to crawl food. During this boom, bases were feverishly building more crawlers to keep up with more food demands, although those build orders frequently got interrupted by the need for more police units.
![[Image: 2162-base.png]](http://dos486.com/alpha/hive/2162-base.png)
It's hard to convey in text exactly how the micromanagement went. I laboriously shuffled tons of tiles between cities and supply crawlers between tiles. I would find chain reactions, like this base over here just got a new forest it can work, so put it on that tile to free up a different forest for a different base which frees up a farm for a different base, and so on. Every city ended up looking like this picture here. Every useful tile is completely crammed in with a laborer or supply crawler. Some crawlers even crawled fungus for 1 nutrient when we ran out of forest.
I suppose this is that disaster about the communal feeding trough at the Hive. I was creating a golden utopia flooded with psych for everyone -- which just led to the talents getting overrun by the overcrowded masses.
2161: Now so many bases are at sizes 5 and 6 and have completely exhausted their options to bring in more food and energy. I could find only two bases that could maintain a GA this turn and boom two turns hence. So now it was time to drop the psych slider. Remember that booming this turn depended on Golden Ages last turn, so even with the psych slider down, I still had several (six) bases booming this turn in the "overtime" from the now-ending golden age.
![[Image: 2161-doctors.png]](http://dos486.com/alpha/hive/2161-doctors.png)
Honorable mention to this one base that was able to keep its GA going for one more turn even with no psych slider. Two doctors is exactly enough to keep the GA going at the size 4 that it will be. Any base can do this at exactly size 4, but only this one had enough food (one big tile plus a crawler) to also boom on the same turn.
I said I'm dropping the psych slider now, but actually it turned out I had to keep it at 20% this turn to keep quite a few bases happy, while they built a police unit this turn or I got the money to upgrade two more next turn. Next turn it would go to 0%.
In international news, Lal's rover finally healed and came to attack a base again -- it killed my defending scout, but took enough damage that I could finally counterattack to kill it with another scout. Note that I still lack Applied Physics tech and thus have no weapons beyond the default 1. I'm hoping that someone will get and trade Nonlinear Mathematics for the 4-power weapon while skipping its prerequisite.
Also Morgan contacted me to yell at me for running Planned economics, and he renounced our Pact. That too makes a Golden Age via the psych slider more difficult without that commerce income. I'll have to live without it.
2162: Population boom is over for now. Up from size 3 four turns ago, now my bases are at sizes 6, 5, 6, 6, 5, 6, 5, 5, 5, 5, 4, 3. (The last one reached size 3 to enable the Golden Age too late to join the population boom.)
I will come back for more booming shortyly when the time is right. What I need now is enough supply crawlers to cash in for the Weather Paradigm, without those bases starving without the crawlers' food. Then I'll build condensors, which will provide the food kick to keep going.
This is what that population boom did to the faction dominance chart:
![[Image: 2162-dominance.png]](http://dos486.com/alpha/hive/2162-dominance.png)
Although, in real terms, it doesn't have as much impact as that looks. At 60% slider, I'm now at 50 labs/turn, up from 38 before the pop boom. That's actually not a huge gain, considering I spent a total of ~250 energy into psych over the four turns.
Much of the added population is still working tiles that don't do a whole lot. Unlike the later Civ games, population in SMAC has nothing of inherent positive value. Even a citizen working a seemingly decent 2-food 1-mineral tile is doing nothing, if the 2 food only supports him and the 1 mineral his police unit. And population is negative value if a crawler has to supply 1 food from a forest to sustain it instead of 2 minerals.
Population booming needs quality jobs for the workers afterwards. Most often that includes Free Market to reap the energy rewards, but that's not useful for the Hive. The classic case for pop-booming is growing onto nice 2-2-2 forests with tree farms, or the more advanced specialists, but we haven't reached those yet. I probably would have been just as well off in game terms by waiting to boom until a few condensors were in place; but I wanted to demonstrate how it goes as early as I possibly could.
A short update chronicling the population boom, although it was long in real time.
In 2157, I raised the psych slider, so that all the Golden Ages began at the start of turn 2158. I issued former and unit movements as usual, then laboriously micromanaged all the bases. Each base followed a checklist that went 2 food, 3 police, 4 psych. The 2 food booms each base from size 3 to 4, then the 3 police (counting the police infantry model as double and upgrading original patrols to it as necessary) and 4 psych will maintain the Golden Age for another turn. I switched supply crawlers from forest minerals to food when necessary. Note that you can move a crawler and then click on it again to activate the convoy order even after it's out of movement. At the end of year 2158, I successfully boomed 8 bases from size 3 to 4 without losing the Golden Age.
2159: The leading bases will boom from size 4 to 5 this turn. Now the checklist becomes the 2 food, 3 police, and 8 psych because that's needed to maintain the GA at size 5 as per my earlier example. Now the psych slider had to go all the way to 100%.
Each turn I had to choose whether to keep the psych slider up, or drop it once enough bases were constrained by food that they wouldn't boom. But there's actually a turn lag on that thanks to the processing order that I described. Any Golden Age begun or continued this turn causes a boom two turns hence. I need to project two turns ahead for whether each base will have enough food to boom at that time, including whatever new farms and supply crawlers it will have by then. So each turn I scrolled through every base and noted each of 1) would it have food to boom this turn, 2) could it hold Golden Age (separately from whether or not it actually boomed), and 3) if it did hold GA now, whether it could boom NEXT turn.
At the end of year 2159, out of 9 eligible bases, 3 could boom and stay in Golden Age for another turn, 3 could boom but couldn't accumulate enough psych-energy to hold the GA, and 3 didn't boom for lack of food. Two of the last category could boom one turn later with the addition of a farm or supply crawler, plus one base is also growing to size 3 this turn with GA and can boom on the following turn. That adds up to a total of 6 bases that boom at the end of 2160 if I keep the psych slider up on 2159, so do it.
2160: The same deal came together one more time: keeping the psych slider at 100% would start or maintain Golden Age at 6 bases this turn for them to boom next turn. One base used the trick I mentioned before: it couldn't work enough energy so it fell out of GA this turn, but could restart the GA with doctors and then boom on the following turn.
One detail was that I ran out of money. My maintenance costs are 14/turn (that's the 12 Creches and the 2/turn loan payment to Morgan), but my income is zero with the entire slider on psych. I had to sell Gene Splicing to Morgan for a paltry 25 credits, cheap but the alternative was bankruptcy.
Another detail was that I was finding less food than I'd expected at the core bases. What was missing was the supply crawlers that I cashed in for the HGP, which no longer existed to crawl food. During this boom, bases were feverishly building more crawlers to keep up with more food demands, although those build orders frequently got interrupted by the need for more police units.
It's hard to convey in text exactly how the micromanagement went. I laboriously shuffled tons of tiles between cities and supply crawlers between tiles. I would find chain reactions, like this base over here just got a new forest it can work, so put it on that tile to free up a different forest for a different base which frees up a farm for a different base, and so on. Every city ended up looking like this picture here. Every useful tile is completely crammed in with a laborer or supply crawler. Some crawlers even crawled fungus for 1 nutrient when we ran out of forest.
I suppose this is that disaster about the communal feeding trough at the Hive. I was creating a golden utopia flooded with psych for everyone -- which just led to the talents getting overrun by the overcrowded masses.
2161: Now so many bases are at sizes 5 and 6 and have completely exhausted their options to bring in more food and energy. I could find only two bases that could maintain a GA this turn and boom two turns hence. So now it was time to drop the psych slider. Remember that booming this turn depended on Golden Ages last turn, so even with the psych slider down, I still had several (six) bases booming this turn in the "overtime" from the now-ending golden age.
Honorable mention to this one base that was able to keep its GA going for one more turn even with no psych slider. Two doctors is exactly enough to keep the GA going at the size 4 that it will be. Any base can do this at exactly size 4, but only this one had enough food (one big tile plus a crawler) to also boom on the same turn.
I said I'm dropping the psych slider now, but actually it turned out I had to keep it at 20% this turn to keep quite a few bases happy, while they built a police unit this turn or I got the money to upgrade two more next turn. Next turn it would go to 0%.
In international news, Lal's rover finally healed and came to attack a base again -- it killed my defending scout, but took enough damage that I could finally counterattack to kill it with another scout. Note that I still lack Applied Physics tech and thus have no weapons beyond the default 1. I'm hoping that someone will get and trade Nonlinear Mathematics for the 4-power weapon while skipping its prerequisite.
Also Morgan contacted me to yell at me for running Planned economics, and he renounced our Pact. That too makes a Golden Age via the psych slider more difficult without that commerce income. I'll have to live without it.
2162: Population boom is over for now. Up from size 3 four turns ago, now my bases are at sizes 6, 5, 6, 6, 5, 6, 5, 5, 5, 5, 4, 3. (The last one reached size 3 to enable the Golden Age too late to join the population boom.)
I will come back for more booming shortyly when the time is right. What I need now is enough supply crawlers to cash in for the Weather Paradigm, without those bases starving without the crawlers' food. Then I'll build condensors, which will provide the food kick to keep going.
This is what that population boom did to the faction dominance chart:
Although, in real terms, it doesn't have as much impact as that looks. At 60% slider, I'm now at 50 labs/turn, up from 38 before the pop boom. That's actually not a huge gain, considering I spent a total of ~250 energy into psych over the four turns.
Much of the added population is still working tiles that don't do a whole lot. Unlike the later Civ games, population in SMAC has nothing of inherent positive value. Even a citizen working a seemingly decent 2-food 1-mineral tile is doing nothing, if the 2 food only supports him and the 1 mineral his police unit. And population is negative value if a crawler has to supply 1 food from a forest to sustain it instead of 2 minerals.
Population booming needs quality jobs for the workers afterwards. Most often that includes Free Market to reap the energy rewards, but that's not useful for the Hive. The classic case for pop-booming is growing onto nice 2-2-2 forests with tree farms, or the more advanced specialists, but we haven't reached those yet. I probably would have been just as well off in game terms by waiting to boom until a few condensors were in place; but I wanted to demonstrate how it goes as early as I possibly could.
![[Image: 2162.png]](http://dos486.com/alpha/hive/2162.png)
.
The extra pop is not immediately of huge value, but once you get some time to terraform more tiles and otherwise 'catch up' to your growth it should be a very nice gain.
