Optimal Land Use: Cities, and Crawlers, and Formers, oh my!

[Earthmichael]

hm, okay. A lot of times that game you were piling on the crawlers mostly because you had space to, and had already built the infrastructure you were able to/wanted.

I think I'm figuring out what about crawlers I find uncomfortable. It's their unlimited nature, almost total lack of long term drawbacks, and fairly short payback time. They feel like a unit you can always use more of, and the rest of the game is designed to not have that. More bases causes issues with Bdrones, more formers need constant support until clean reactors, larger cities need more nutrients, facilities are one per city and most need upkeep, armies need support, the only other long term "free" units are probes and captured worms/natives in fungus which don't have unlimited exponential increase.

I do see why they're appealing, and perhaps if the AI used them at all properly I'd get accustomed to them as a core game feature, but having something so.. universally useful to build, and so cheap, eh.

One reason I prioritize clean reactors is because Formers are more universally useful than crawlers, which is one reason why I need to build 3+ clean formers for every crawler I build.  If we want to put down a unit because it too useful, then we should be trying to weaken formers, not crawlers. 

Yet I do not see this happening; I wonder why crawlers get all of this ire, but formers get none?  But my gameplay shows that I value formers far above crawlers.  hmmm?

[Yitzi]

I wonder why crawlers get all of this ire, but formers get none?

In short: Because formers are not competing with anything; there is nothing that is less-used because they are.  Crawlers compete with workers (directly in terms of land use; indirectly in terms of FOP use, as while workers are "built" with nutrients and crawlers with minerals, terraforming choices make the different FOPs somewhat interchangeable.)

[Earthmichael]

Actually, workers are more useful than crawlers except in the extreme case of Hab Domes, high value specialists, easy pop boom, etc.; otherwise, crawlers have niche uses, but certainly do not outperform workers.  So crawler are not overpowered.

In the early to mid game, before any of this comes into play, workers can fully harvest a square, particularly forests because they are so easy to plant, where a crawler can't.  Furthermore, I have to have a minimum city size of 5 to even think of a specialist, which is rarely the case for the early game.  And even if I got a size 5 city to use a specialist, the specialists are not very good.

So I am far better off having my workers harvest multi resouces squares like forests and an occasion farm/collector or borehole, and have my crawlers harvest my mines.  And not much anything else, except filling in the occasional need for extra food here and there.

Once energy limits are lifted, I can crawl an energy farm.  But this is not as easy as it sounds.  First, for maximum effect, I need for the crawler to first move to my HQ.  Then I need to move from my HQ to the energy farm, which is normally at a boundary of my territory.  So overall, a crawler might have to cover 25 or more squares before it becomes effective.  Even if I have roads everywhere, that is still 8+ turns.  For my trouble, I get 4-5 energy, where my crawler get probably get to a mine and get 4 mineral with a lot less bother.  Both are useful, but unless you think crawling a mine is "overpowered", then it is silly to think energy farming is "overpowered".

It takes a lot of real game experience to decide what is truly overpowered. These "overpowered" tactics that some worry about are rarely deployed, and in the few games they are deployed, it is in moderation.  Probably only one game in 5 do I see someone who has created an energy farm, and even then, it is just 9 squares, not an entire board.  I do not encounter people who crawl everything and make their citizens specialists.  I only rarely encounter ICS, and easily defeat it.  And most of the other things that seem to be a cause of concern show up very rarely.

Why don't I see these things?  Is it because the players are stupid or ignorant?  No! Because there are too many things basic analysis does not take into account, such as the time and resources and technoligies required to set things up.

In the early game, the only compelling place for crawlers are on resource specials that I cannot reach directly from a city.  It is otherwise not worthwhile to spend 30 resources for a crawler that can only get me 1 or 2 FOPS; I have much more productive places to put those 30 resources, namely formers, colony pods, and facilities such as recycling centers, childrens creche, tree farms, network nodes, etc.

In the mid game, I do build crawlers to cover all of my mines, but very little else.  Again, there are better things to do with my resources.

In the late game, with sats and high value specialists and food enhancements, once can come up with a scenario where crawling every square is almost as useful was working every square.  But at this point in the game, who cares?

[ete]

In lategame (soil enhancers and stuff) I'm totally fine with Crawlers+Specialists beating out forest, in fact they should in my opinion (though not necessarily by a huge margin). Forests are pretty cheap and easy, and they're great for most of the game. Rewarding a player who in lategame is willing to reterraform with much more time consuming enhancements (farm/condensor/soil enhancer, some boreholes) and produce a load of crawlers, more than you reward a player who just sits on mass forest forever and builds Tree Farms/Hybrid Forests seems entirely fair. And quite fitting, as you get more advanced the citizens are turned over from manual collecting jobs (which are mechanized) to more service/research/entertainment type jobs.

Ok, I suppose that makes sense.  The problem is that even earlier in the game, an energy farm (crawler-based) tends to beat out forests (worker-based).  And it's not necessarily even that much more terraforming time: Having 3 collectors per mirror in a square pattern costs only 50% more terraforming time than filling the space with forests and produces an average of 3.25 FOP per square, +1 FM (forests with tree farms are worth 5+1 FM, but use 3 on supporting the workers with nutrients and psych).  Alternating rows takes only twice the terraforming time of forests, and gives 4 per square (+1 FM).  And that's lowlands; if the area is naturally elevated it's even better.

Given that energy farms take more terraforming time (50% more or double forest) it kinda makes sense that they produce proportionally more FOP per square than worked forests, though once Hybrid Forests come along that changes. The fact that they're crawlable so don't require upkeep is cool and certainly makes them viable, but crawled energy does not have the same effect as crawled nutrients in that you can't turn loads of citizens into specialists. It's not really competing with citizens, it's just a way to turn former turns+minerals into long term energy income.

[ete]

One reason I prioritize clean reactors is because Formers are more universally useful than crawlers, which is one reason why I need to build 3+ clean formers for every crawler I build.  If we want to put down a unit because it too useful, then we should be trying to weaken formers, not crawlers. 

Yet I do not see this happening; I wonder why crawlers get all of this ire, but formers get none?  But my gameplay shows that I value formers far above crawlers.  hmmm?

In your AAR you listed I think 16 crawlers, 11 formers at one point? Was that entirely forced by the no expansion rules?

And yes, once clean reactors come along Formers are great in near unlimited numbers, but that's a fair way into the game and you still need something to collect. I'm not arguing that Crawlers are actually stronger than Formers (a game where one player was banned from each would be laughably one sided in favor of the guy who got formers, I'm sure), just trying to explain and understand my (potentially badly founded) discomfort with them.

[Yitzi]

Actually, workers are more useful than crawlers except in the extreme case of Hab Domes, high value specialists, easy pop boom, etc.; otherwise, crawlers have niche uses, but certainly do not outperform workers.

Depends what you mean by "outperform".  As far as I can tell, crawlers generally lag behind workers by 2 FOP (factors of production, i.e. nutrients+minerals+energy).  A worker needs 3 FOP (2 nutrients and 2 psych, but 1 energy produces 2 psych with midgame facilities).  3>2.

In the early to mid game, before any of this comes into play, workers can fully harvest a square, particularly forests because they are so easy to plant, where a crawler can't.

Maybe I'd better ask...around what point do you start using non-forests on a regular basis?  How many techs, how many bases, how many formers?  (Approximately for all of those.)  And at that point, how frequently are you founding new bases?

Because without easy pop booms and without absurdly high base propagation (say, with two or three bases at a time having either not built their first colony pod, or with a colony pod on the way), it seems 1 former per base should be plenty to use even non-forests (maybe not boreholes, but regular farm/collector in any case.)

Both are useful, but unless you think crawling a mine is "overpowered", then it is sill to think energy farming is "overpowered".

Crawling mines would be overpowered as well if it didn't rely on the uncontrollable placement of rocky squares.

It takes a lot of real game experience to decide what is truly overpowered. These "overpowered" tactics that some worry about are rarely deployed, and in the few games they are deployed, it is in moderation.  Probably only one game in 5 do I see someone who has created an energy farm, and even then, it is just 9 squares, not an entire board.  I do not encounter people who crawl everything and make their citizens specialists.  I only rarely encounter ICS, and easily defeat it.  And most of the other things that seem to be a cause of concern show up very rarely.

Ok...perhaps it's best to fix the stuff that is clearly overpowered then (e.g. FM/"magic facilities" and cheap upgrade costs), and see how that plays and what else (if anything) needs fixing.

In the early game, the only compelling place for crawlers are on resource specials that I cannot reach directly from a city.  It is otherwise not worthwhile to spend 30 resources for a crawler that can only get me 1 or 2 FOPS; I have much more productive places to put those 30 resources, namely formers, colony pods, and facilities such as recycling centers, childrens creche, tree farms, network nodes, etc.

By that logic, it's not worthwhile to produce enough nutrients to grow past size 4, as there are much more productive places to put those 50 resources.

Given that energy farms take more terraforming time (50% more or double forest) it kinda makes sense that they produce proportionally more FOP per square than worked forests

Except that they don't take up proportionately more territory; if your limit is territory rather than terraforming time (as it probably will be after the early stages, once you start running into other factions), then that's a big deal.

but crawled energy does not have the same effect as crawled nutrients in that you can't turn loads of citizens into specialists.

Instead, you can get the energy directly.  Before advanced specialists come along, it actually is pretty comparable (a bit worse if you'd exploit the "specialists lower drone cap" feature, but otherwise very much comparable.)

[Earthmichael]

Actually, in my opinion, the only thing that definitely overpowered is copters and atrocities in general.

Atrocities are supposed to be balanced because the entire AI world turns against you if you use them very much.  But most games do not have much AI, and even when they do, it is usually not that big of a deal.  The other big problem with atrocities is the ecodamage and rising water penalty.  But everyone has to suffer that, so it does not specifically hurt the faction commiting the atrocities.  So for this reason, I typically request for attrocities to be banned in most of my games.

Same for copters.  It is the only non-land multi-atack unit it the game, and yet it costs no more than an attack-every-other-turn needlejet.  Even the most advanced land and sea hulls do not get this multi-attack capability, only copters.  So in most of my games, copters are banned.

FM is not overpowered; it provides some decent benefits, but at huge penalties!  Has anyone who thinks FM is overpowered actually tried a game against humans using FM?

I have never thought of upgrades as cheap.  It typically takes 30 energy to accomplish a 10 mineral upgrade; that does not seem cheap to me, since I could get 15 minerals toward facilities for the same cost.

I don't know what a "magic facility" is, so I am not sure what is referenced.  I think even the facilities that are a pretty good deal are not overpowered, since you only get one of them.

Yes, the Nomads game was an anomoly, because of the restriction against colony pods.  So crawlers were the only way to use the rest of your land.  I probably should not have referenced it, but it was the only AAR I had posted.

I have posted quited a few game of the month endgames.  Load the saves and see how many units of each kind were built in the various games.  Take a look at the map and see how it was terraformed.

I would post more AARs, but I accidentally lost most of my old game saves, so all I can post is save or screenshot from one of my current games, which would put me at a disadvantage.  However, I am currently playing the old "Market Forces" GOM, so I am attaching my latest save from that game.  Note that since the starting position hugs the northern edge of the board, which is all rocky, I have more than an average number of crawlers working these rocky squares.

[Yitzi]

Actually, in my opinion, the only thing that definitely overpowered is copters and atrocities in general.

Atrocities are supposed to be balanced because the entire AI world turns against you if you use them very much.  But most games do not have much AI, and even when they do, it is usually not that big of a deal.  The other big problem with atrocities is the ecodamage and rising water penalty.  But everyone has to suffer that, so it does not specifically hurt the faction commiting the atrocities.  So for this reason, I typically request for attrocities to be banned in most of my games.

Ecodamage doesn't just result in global warming; it also produces fungus over your nice terraforming, and of course mind worm attacks.

Same for copters.  It is the only non-land multi-atack unit it the game, and yet it costs no more than an attack-every-other-turn needlejet.  Even the most advanced land and sea hulls do not get this multi-attack capability, only copters.  So in most of my games, copters are banned.

I personally think there are better alternatives than banning it, such as limiting its force projection capability and making it easier to defend against air.

FM is not overpowered; it provides some decent benefits, but at huge penalties!

What penalties?  It limits your ability to go on the offensive (until punishment spheres), removes the ability to use police (devoting some of that extra energy to psych will far more than compensate), and somewhat weakens your ability to attack mind worms (so build some cheap scout patrols or scout rovers and use some of that extra energy to upgrade them to empath troops.) 
And of course it increases your ecodamage, but cutting your mineral production by 2-5 per base or building a bunch of tree farms will generally more than make up for it.  (Free Market doubles your ecodamage as compared to Planned; on Transcend with a normal life setting,cutting mineral production by 1 reduces ecodamage in the early to midgame (say 20 techs, or 40 techs with a Centauri preserve) by roughly 2 points, or 4 points for Free Market.  Thus, unless you're facing something like 20 ecodamage per base before Free Market, it really isn't that significant.)
Now, if upgrading actually cost a substantial amount, and Free Market were worth a lot more than 2-5 minerals in ecodamage, then it would be "good benefits at substantial cost" as you say.  (As a bonus, making PLANET score more relevant in terms of ecodamage would make Green less underpowered in the midgame.)

Has anyone who thinks FM is overpowered actually tried a game against humans using FM?

Well, Velociryx seems to think that (unless playing a faction with substantial bonuses such as Yang or Deidre) the only options if the other guy is using FM are to use it yourself or force them away from it.  I'd consider that fairly overpowered.

I have never thought of upgrades as cheap.  It typically takes 30 energy to accomplish a 10 mineral upgrade; that does not seem cheap to me, since I could get 15 minerals toward facilities for the same cost.

I don't know what a "magic facility" is, so I am not sure what is referenced.

Link.

I think even the facilities that are a pretty good deal are not overpowered, since you only get one of them.

One per base.  The "magic facilities" mechanic is faction-wide: Each such facility built in any base increases your clean minerals in all bases.

I have posted quited a few game of the month endgames.

Game of the month often isn't really a normal game, but if you can direct me to where you posted those games, that might help.

However, I am currently playing the old "Market Forces" GOM, so I am attaching my latest save from that game.  Note that since the starting position hugs the northern edge of the board, which is all rocky, I have more than an average number of crawlers working these rocky squares.

1. I notice it looks fairly ICS-y.
2. Why did you build roads everywhere?  It seems a waste of former time when you could instead just build roads between your bases.
3. Why'd you spend so much former time on raising land, instead of just using sea improvements (which are quite competitive with forests except when they're better*)?  If you'd just used sea improvements and cut out most of the roads, you probably could've gotten the same stuff done with half as many formers, or done other sorts of terraforming.  Sure, those squares don't get you very many minerals, but you seemed to have a plethora of rocky squares anyway.

It seems that your not-finding-crawlers-very-useful is because you have a terraforming pattern that is extremely wasteful, and therefore you're forced to stick to forests (which are fairly crawler-unfriendly, especially under Market).

*Assuming you have all appropriate facilities for which you have the necessary tech, sea improvements are better than forests when:
-You can't get tree farms OR
-You can get aquafarms but not hybrid forests.
If you have hybrid forests, or tree farms but no aquafarms, then they're comparable, meaning that it's better to plant kelp and build a tidal harness (8 former-turns), than raise the land and then build a forest (16 former-turns, plus some cash).

[Earthmichael]

However, I am currently playing the old "Market Forces" GOM, so I am attaching my latest save from that game.  Note that since the starting position hugs the northern edge of the board, which is all rocky, I have more than an average number of crawlers working these rocky squares.

1. I notice it looks fairly ICS-y.
2. Why did you build roads everywhere?  It seems a waste of former time when you could instead just build roads between your bases.
3. Why'd you spend so much former time on raising land, instead of just using sea improvements (which are quite competitive with forests except when they're better*)?  If you'd just used sea improvements and cut out most of the roads, you probably could've gotten the same stuff done with half as many formers, or done other sorts of terraforming.  Sure, those squares don't get you very many minerals, but you seemed to have a plethora of rocky squares anyway.

It seems that your not-finding-crawlers-very-useful is because you have a terraforming pattern that is extremely wasteful, and therefore you're forced to stick to forests (which are fairly crawler-unfriendly, especially under Market).

*Assuming you have all appropriate facilities for which you have the necessary tech, sea improvements are better than forests when:
-You can't get tree farms OR
-You can get aquafarms but not hybrid forests.
If you have hybrid forests, or tree farms but no aquafarms, then they're comparable, meaning that it's better to plant kelp and build a tidal harness (8 former-turns), than raise the land and then build a forest (16 former-turns, plus some cash).

One of the restrictions I self imposed based on comments by Kirov is to play without military expansion.  The point is if you conquer every base but one, then cornering the energy market is quite inexpensive.  And conquest is much easier than the alternative.  But to stick with spirit of the scenario, I decided to play totally defensively, with the exception if someone established a base within 3 square of my territory, I would capture or destroy it.  But otherwise, I would depend upon peaceful expansion, despite the fact that all my neighbors are trying to kill me.

I have got a GREAT IDEA.  You go ahead and play Market Forces from the start yourself, with the same non-conquest restriction proposed by Kirov.  Play with all of your improved ideas.  Then let's compare the result based on the turn where each of us win by cornering the market, and see who gets there first!  Then we can compare notes to see where each of our strategies stand at varous tech levels, and see what worked best!

A few things I should warn you about that may change your perspective on things. 
1. I could not find any strategy of pacification that could avoid 5 of the factions declaring vendetta on Morgan.
2. It is quite difficult to defend sea bases and sea formers against the Pirates once they declare vendetta.
3. Once you load the starting position for market forces, you will see that Morgan is land locked.  So you must either raise more land by terraforming, or make the sea bases that you mentioned.

Good luck!

[Earthmichael]

To understand why I build roads everywhere, see my article:  "Roads: The Key to Efficient Terraforming"

http://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?topic=1505.msg4389#msg4389

As for game of the month, I made the winning submission to 3 of the more recent GOM.  Just search for GOM and Earthmichael as the submitter, and all of my submission should show up.  Since my submissions were the winning entries on 3 occasions, I guess my strategy might be a little better than average, but on any of those 3 scenarios, I would be very interested if you can improve on my entry using your more advanced ideas, and by exploiting all of the things that you have found overpowered.

[Yitzi]

One of the restrictions I self imposed based on comments by Kirov is to play without military expansion.  The point is if you conquer every base but one, then cornering the energy market is quite inexpensive.  And conquest is much easier than the alternative.  But to stick with spirit of the scenario, I decided to play totally defensively, with the exception if someone established a base within 3 square of my territory, I would capture or destroy it.  But otherwise, I would depend upon peaceful expansion, despite the fact that all my neighbors are trying to kill me.

I have got a GREAT IDEA.  You go ahead and play Market Forces from the start yourself, with the same non-conquest restriction proposed by Kirov.  Play with all of your improved ideas.  Then let's compare the result based on the turn where each of us win by cornering the market, and see who gets there first!  Then we can compare notes to see where each of our strategies stand at varous tech levels, and see what worked best!

Sounds like a good idea.  What turn did you manage it?  (I presume on Transcend?)  And did you play with Kyrub's version or Scient's?

To understand why I build roads everywhere, see my article:  "Roads: The Key to Efficient Terraforming"

http://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?topic=1505.msg4389#msg4389

See my response there.

As for game of the month, I made the winning submission to 3 of the more recent GOM.  Just search for GOM and Earthmichael as the submitter, and all of my submission should show up.  Since my submissions were the winning entries on 3 occasions, I guess my strategy might be a little better than average, but on any of those 3 scenarios, I would be very interested if you can improve on my entry using your more advanced ideas, and by exploiting all of the things that you have found overpowered.

Apparently they didn't.

[Earthmichael]

One of the restrictions I self imposed based on comments by Kirov is to play without military expansion.  The point is if you conquer every base but one, then cornering the energy market is quite inexpensive.  And conquest is much easier than the alternative.  But to stick with spirit of the scenario, I decided to play totally defensively, with the exception if someone established a base within 3 square of my territory, I would capture or destroy it.  But otherwise, I would depend upon peaceful expansion, despite the fact that all my neighbors are trying to kill me.

I have got a GREAT IDEA.  You go ahead and play Market Forces from the start yourself, with the same non-conquest restriction proposed by Kirov.  Play with all of your improved ideas.  Then let's compare the result based on the turn where each of us win by cornering the market, and see who gets there first!  Then we can compare notes to see where each of our strategies stand at varous tech levels, and see what worked best!

Sounds like a good idea.  What turn did you manage it?  (I presume on Transcend?)  And did you play with Kyrub's version or Scient's?

I have not had time to complete it yet.  The save I posted was my latest progress.  You can go ahead and start, and we can compare notes.

I played with Scient's on Transcend.  I believe this is the standard for the GOMs.

[Green1]

Earthmicheal....

Interesting observations on terraforming.

I do not care what people say... the terraforming and land management of SMAX is pretty deep. Deeper than even these more modern games.

Only thing that gets me is how come the aliens seem to have brought Earth forests with them. Shouldn't they have brought thier own flora and fauna?

[Earthmichael]

Yes, I agree the SMAC land management is pretty deep.  There are very few games where you can raise land out of the sea, or lower land into the sea, eventually creating a sea-free or all-sea planet if you like.

Perhaps when aliens plant trees they should get a unique display icon to reflect the native version.  But I guess regardless of the initial source of the forest, the behavior and resources are the same.

[Buster's Uncle]

Easy enough to add a graphic for prog trees.  Tougher to add code to check that it's a prog former planting and use the graphic.