If you are going to build a road at all, I think it is best done before terraforming (except remove fungus or terraform level). For example, if you plant a forest first, I believe building a road takes more time than it would on just open ground.
There are many reasons one might have to revisit a square. It could be that fungus has overtaken. Or that your needs have changed, and a forest needs to give way to some other development. Or you may need to send military units to deal with a worm boil, or an enemy invasion. Or it may be time to improve the road to a tube. In an case, having the road makes it faster to deal with any of these things, since the unit can move and begin the improvement (or attack) on the same turn.
I also tend to deal with terraformers in packs that can generally complete the desire terraforming in 1 or 2 turns. It makes the management of their tasks a lot simpler and faster for me, and is much more effective than automating the formers. So if I am building forests, I generally use a pack of 4, less with WP, of course.
It does, however, add substantially to the cost of terraforming; in the case of forests, you end up spending 6 former-turns (1 to move the road-builder, a second to build the road, and 4 to build the forest) instead of 5, a 20% increase
But, I get the road built, which I want anyway. If I wait to build the road later, I will need to move a former back onto the square, costing an extra trun, and it will take longer to build the road after the forest has been planted.
I also get the value of getting the forest 3 turns sooner than I would otherwise get it.
And it is much less realtime consumed by me to play the game this way, which is an important consideration since I typically have at least 4 games going at the same time.
I have to revisit a lot of my squares at one time or another, particularly if there is rising water, which there almost always is, even if I keep my ecodamage to zero.
When I want to revisit a square to build a borehole or a mirror or to drill to aquifer or to raise land, I don't want to send a single unit and wait forever for it to happen. So I have typically packs of 4 or 6 or 8 formers (sometimes more) for these things.
Furthermore, as I move along my road to get to where I want to terraform, my pack moves at most 2 square down the road, and then builds a forest or farm or sensor or something. This takes me a little bit longer to get to where I want to terraform, but my formers are fully productive all along the way.
I have found that most multiplayer games end up dealing with a lot of rising water, particularly if AI is involved. Most AI faction seem to pay no attention to ecodamage. So revisiting square to raise them happens far more often than I would like.
Also, even with low or even zero ecodamage, I still get fungus spread and an occasional fungal pop. If I have a road already on that square, it is much easier to get a former pack to the square to get rid of the fungus and replace my original terraforming. Fortunately, speading fungus and pops do not damage the underlying roads or magtubes.
But this requires roads between the various mines and solar farms and such for this to work.
If I have a good network of roads, this kind of active defense is very doable.
Unless bases are really far apart, assuming adequate sensor/ZOC coverage and an active defense
You should always have units available in various regions for active defense, so that you can hit invaders (especially mindworms) the moment they show up. Once you have your cities linked with magtubes, you won't need region based active defense, since you can get to any region on magtubes. But I always keep a lot of units available for active defense.
meanwhile, the mindworms will get a chance to kill any of your units in range.
because you need fewer units to defend if your counterattack is strong and you're well aware of them being on their way (sensors).
Evacuating? And letting the worms come to your bases/eat improvements, or the foes do what they like?
I have had midgame pops that brought a dozen mindworms visiting, and lategame pops with over 20. Killing all of them immediately is critically important.
I generally build clean defenders; although they cost more up front, they pay back quickly, because I rarely lose my active defense attackers, so they can hang around for 100 turns or longer.
I generally build a several X/1/1 attackers to attack human invaders, where X is the highest attack I have available. (Understand that if I am invaded, I will build magtubes to the point of invasion, so my infantry can attack at full strength.)
Once I have magtubes available, I will then shift to building 1/1/1 Clean Empath, which has the amazingly low cost of only 2 rows! Then I depend upon magtubes (usually built on the fly that turn) to shuttle the low cost but amazingly effective worm-killers to the boil.
The key is to kill the mindworms BEFORE they can do any damage. And yes, they will spread widely apart, as far as road and fungus can take them. Considering that 49 potential squares can be reached at 3 squares distance, it is unlikey that very much clumping will occur after they move, and if you don't get them all then, they will spread out further.
The cost of send some formers to build magtubes is NOTHING compared to the havoc 20+ mindworms can do in one turn. Each of those 20 mindworms will kill a unit is one is close by, or attack a base, or destroy a terrain improvement. Of these, perhaps the least damaging is the terrain damage, yet it would cost a minimum of 80 former turns to repair the damage 20 mindworms can cause. And that is if they hit relatively small stuff. If the also take out some boreholes, mirrors, and such, it could be a LOT more turns. So a dozen or 18 turns to build out the magtubes is a cheap price to pay.
And you can have mindworm attacks while producing ZERO ecodamge; it has happened plenty of times to me.
As for the invaders, if they do have a second wave, they will need to attack the same turn that they land, which probably means that they are more costly.
Also, I usually build a few defensive units, that I move to protect my X-1-1 clean attackers, so that I take a minimum of casualties in counterattacks.
The key is to kill the mindworms BEFORE they can do any damage. And yes, they will spread widely apart, as far as road and fungus can take them. Considering that 49 potential squares can be reached at 3 squares distance, it is unlikey that very much clumping will occur after they move, and if you don't get them all then, they will spread out further.
The cost of send some formers to build magtubes is NOTHING compared to the havoc 20+ mindworms can do in one turn. Each of those 20 mindworms will kill a unit is one is close by, or attack a base, or destroy a terrain improvement. Of these, perhaps the least damaging is the terrain damage, yet it would cost a minimum of 80 former turns to repair the damage 20 mindworms can cause. And that is if they hit relatively small stuff. If the also take out some boreholes, mirrors, and such, it could be a LOT more turns. So a dozen or 18 turns to build out the magtubes is a cheap price to pay.
I suppose that makes sense. However, keep in mind that your "49 potential squares" calculation is assuming roads everywhere; if you don't have roads except between bases, they're going to be a lot more limited in where they can go.
QuoteAnd you can have mindworm attacks while producing ZERO ecodamge; it has happened plenty of times to me.
Even with a lot of mindworms? I've never seen that.
(By the way, something you should probably know about mindworm pop numbers: The number of mindworms (and whether they're there at all, and I think whether they include locusts) depends on how many pops you've had previously: The more pops, the worse it is. However, there's a bug (fixed in all versions of my patch) where building tree farms, hybrid forests, centauri preserves, and temples of planet count as pops for that purpose (they never spawn worms themselves, but do make future pops worse, though less likely to happen.)
QuoteAs for the invaders, if they do have a second wave, they will need to attack the same turn that they land, which probably means that they are more costly.
So you always manage to destroy the entire invading force the first turn?
Also, what if they're not landing, but rather coming from elsewhere on the continent?
Even if they only spread to 9 squares (because of no roads nearby), the effect on those 9 squares is devestating. And it still means 9 places to attack, instead of 1. And they still continue to spread. And the problem is, if you do not have roads already built, you may not be able to reach the mindworms to kill them when they first arrive.
It has happen to me plenty of times in Market Forces. All of my bases produce zero ecodamage, but I still get spreading fungus (almost always containing a pile of worms) and pop (which always carry a pile of worms).
I have tree farms, hybrid forests, and centauri preserves in every city, so that could account for the high number of worms I get.
I nearly always manage to destroy the invaders very promptly; the ones I do not kill the first turn, generally have suffered a couple of burst of collateral damage, which reduces their effectiveness.
If they are coming overland, then this indicates to me that diplomacy has failed
and I may break roads or magtubes if needed to slow down a larger enemy force until I have time to gear up.
2. I do occasionally get pops with 0 ecodamage at all of my cities. (They may be "fungus spreading", but either way, they are packed with lots of mindworms.) The save of Market Forces I posted illustrates this. Make sure that all bases are at zero ecodamage. About every 4 turns or so, you will still get a major big time mindworm invasion.
This is probably something that cannot be modded, but it is a real bother.
Is it possible just to perform the checks at the end of the turn, instead of the beginning? Then display the result of the check next turn?