I always thought it would be nice if a probe team had the option to take down/take over another faction's satellite net. The probe team could only do that in the HQ of a faction.
I agree with Earthmichael here.QuoteI think the crawler have a pretty easy counter if you focus some military on destroying them.
Unless they're defended. But even with a counter, they're way too cheap, at 30 minerals and no upkeep (in comparison, a worker costs 20-130 nutrients, more once you get hab domes, and has upkeep of 2 nutrients and 2 psych.)I don't think crawlers are overpowered, but rather rightly priced. 30 minerals to harvest 1 square seems fair (where a colony pod can harvest 2 squares and get other benefits for the same cost).
Firstly, that colony pod is worth only 1 square, as you give up a population point (and thus a worker) when you build it.
More importantly, that colony pod then requires all those production-multiplying facilities you mentioned in order to get full benefit; a crawler uses the production-multiplying facilities of its home base, and is therefore better compared to another population point in that base.QuoteCrawlers are also very vulnerable to combat, particularly air units, and can be subverted.
That still leaves them overpowered in times of peace (e.g. before contact). Also, when the only possible responses to crawlers are to use crawlers yourself or to go to war, that leaves no room for a more worker-based builder playstyle.QuoteSpecialists also do not seem overpowered. Until late game, you get at most 5 energy for a specialist, whereas in midgame your workers are typically getting 3/2/3.
Ok, I'll grant that; let's just agree then that advanced (4+ energy) specialists should come no earlier than Hybrid Forests (which are needed for that 3/2/3 you mentioned), and then the question of whether to move Hybrid Forests later (similar to the other similar 240-mineral facilities) is another issue. (Before Hybrid Forests, however, 4-energy specialists are too much, since they make crawler+specialist too powerful as compared to workers.)QuoteSatellites are pretty expensive. Yes, they provide a global benefit, but each satellite costs a lot. Also, sats can be targetted by other players.
Sats can't be targeted by other players until Self-Aware Machines, substantially after they can be first built. Moving Orbital Defense Pods earlier in the tech tree and making them cheaper, and moving mineral and nutrient satellites somewhat later and making them somewhat more expensive (because those two snowball all too easily) would be all the "weakening" that would be needed.
Firstly, that colony pod is worth only 1 square, as you give up a population point (and thus a worker) when you build it.
More importantly, that colony pod then requires all those production-multiplying facilities you mentioned in order to get full benefit; a crawler uses the production-multiplying facilities of its home base, and is therefore better compared to another population point in that base.
A worker in a city can fully harvest a square; a supply crawler can only get one resource. They are fine for a single resource square, but most squares are better than that. A worker can harvest 3/2/3 or 6/6 from a hybrid forest square or a borehole; a supply crawler gets only half or less of the value.
Keep in mind, though, that a worker requires 2 nutrients and 2 psych upkeep, which cuts into that substantially. Once you've got hybrid forests, the worker may be slightly superior (until advanced specialists come along), and of course for your boreholes in the city radius (however many you can manage) the worker is better, but for the most part the crawler comes out better. Let's compare:
-Early game to early midgame (no advanced specialists, no hybrid forests): With a worker, you can work a forest for 2/2/1, or a farm/solar for roughly 3/1/1 (and that's a fairly good square). After discounting 2 nutrients for the worker and 1 energy to be multiplied into 2 psych to keep him happy, that's 0/2/0 or 1/1/0, as compared to 4 FOPs from a crawler (farm/condenser, or mine, or "energy park"). Free Market evens it out a bit, but not by all that much since it boosts energy parks as well. (An "energy park" style approach doesn't work as well with workers, as energy parks are a lot less efficient when interrupted by squares that have neither solar collectors nor mirrors, such as bases.)
-Late midgame (advanced specialists, hybrid forests, and soil enrichers are all available): You can work a forest for 3/3/2 (before Free Market) or farm/enricher/solar for 4/1/1; after psych and nutrients, that's 1/3/1 or 2/1/0; engineers mean that nutrients are worth roughly twice as much as the other two types, so that's effectively 5-6 FOP (7 with Free Market or Eudaimonia). Crawling farm/condenser/enricher gives you 6/0/0, for 12.QuoteA city created by a colony pod can grow. After 10 turns (with a 2N square available), it works 2 squares, and so on. Furthermore, it can spawn other colony pods for more cities. A supply crawler has no growth potental; it harvests exactly one resource, period.
And then the results of that harvesting can be used to build more supply crawlers to harvest more squares.QuoteHowever, a supply crawler can serve a strategic role. It can harvest squares that are small gaps between cities, rather than take the ICS approach and build another city.
And this is the sort of thing that it would do if depowered and cost-increased to be on par with workers, rather than giving more net benefit for less cost.QuoteIt can concentrate energy into a single city, perferably the HQ. It can provide food to a base that otherwise would face starvation. But I do not think these strategic roles in any way make it overpowered.
I'd say "concentrate energy into a single city" does, simply by making efficiency largely ignorable (and that's before considering stuff like the Supercollider and Space Elevator).
Oh, and another use: It can be used to get use out of squares that you don't want a base near for whatever reason.QuoteIt is just another great tool in a thinking man's arsenal. I would hate to see this tool removed
Me too, but I do want it to only be of advanced strategic use (and maybe some ability to help finish projects quicker, though nothing as strong as it is now in that respect), not "the most efficient use of squares."
FOP=Factors Of Production (Energy, Mins, or Nuts)
And.. I do find Supply Crawlers are a very interesting addition to the game, but probably too cheap for their effectiveness overall. Unlike cities which require maintenance, increase inefficiency, require drone control, etc, they can pay for themselves pretty quickly and give strongly exponential increases in production power. A 4 min crawler (quite reasonable with enough formers) will pay for another crawler every 7.5 turns once in place (ignoring any Mineral boosting facilities, with a GJ factory it's 5 turns), which even accounting for former turns and time to move into position is a very impressive doubling time without any significant limiting factor (it's the lack of limiting factors which seems to be the issue, bases have all sorts of things slowing their exponential growth).
I like crawlers, but imo they are so cheap that even if they don't imbalance the game much in any particular direction (other than maybe towards people who get them sooner, or builders in general), they feel like they're the core of any competitive strategy. I'd prefer to play with Crawlers as a useful and interesting tool which can be powerful than with them as something absolutely required in huge numbers to win against a human. Reducing the doubling time by just upping the cost seems like the simplest way to do this.
A worker in a city can fully harvest a square; a supply crawler can only get one resource. They are fine for a single resource square, but most squares are better than that. A worker can harvest 3/2/3 or 6/6 from a hybrid forest square or a borehole; a supply crawler gets only half or less of the value.
Keep in mind, though, that a worker requires 2 nutrients and 2 psych upkeep, which cuts into that substantially. Once you've got hybrid forests, the worker may be slightly superior (until advanced specialists come along), and of course for your boreholes in the city radius (however many you can manage) the worker is better, but for the most part the crawler comes out better. Let's compare:
-Early game to early midgame (no advanced specialists, no hybrid forests): With a worker, you can work a forest for 2/2/1, or a farm/solar for roughly 3/1/1 (and that's a fairly good square). After discounting 2 nutrients for the worker and 1 energy to be multiplied into 2 psych to keep him happy, that's 0/2/0 or 1/1/0, as compared to 4 FOPs from a crawler (farm/condenser, or mine, or "energy park"). Free Market evens it out a bit, but not by all that much since it boosts energy parks as well. (An "energy park" style approach doesn't work as well with workers, as energy parks are a lot less efficient when interrupted by squares that have neither solar collectors nor mirrors, such as bases.)
-Late midgame (advanced specialists, hybrid forests, and soil enrichers are all available): You can work a forest for 3/3/2 (before Free Market) or farm/enricher/solar for 4/1/1; after psych and nutrients, that's 1/3/1 or 2/1/0; engineers mean that nutrients are worth roughly twice as much as the other two types, so that's effectively 5-6 FOP (7 with Free Market or Eudaimonia). Crawling farm/condenser/enricher gives you 6/0/0, for 12.QuoteA city created by a colony pod can grow. After 10 turns (with a 2N square available), it works 2 squares, and so on. Furthermore, it can spawn other colony pods for more cities. A supply crawler has no growth potental; it harvests exactly one resource, period.
And then the results of that harvesting can be used to build more supply crawlers to harvest more squares.QuoteHowever, a supply crawler can serve a strategic role. It can harvest squares that are small gaps between cities, rather than take the ICS approach and build another city.
And this is the sort of thing that it would do if depowered and cost-increased to be on par with workers, rather than giving more net benefit for less cost.QuoteIt can concentrate energy into a single city, perferably the HQ. It can provide food to a base that otherwise would face starvation. But I do not think these strategic roles in any way make it overpowered.
I'd say "concentrate energy into a single city" does, simply by making efficiency largely ignorable (and that's before considering stuff like the Supercollider and Space Elevator).
Oh, and another use: It can be used to get use out of squares that you don't want a base near for whatever reason.QuoteIt is just another great tool in a thinking man's arsenal. I would hate to see this tool removed
Me too, but I do want it to only be of advanced strategic use (and maybe some ability to help finish projects quicker, though nothing as strong as it is now in that respect), not "the most efficient use of squares."
Fair point with the mineral limit restriction, but I did actually note moving to the square and improving it. The formers thing is obviously facetious, they require maintenance till quite far into the game, and unlike supply crawlers they don't actually harvest anything (workers have their own set of limits, as described previously). They DO enable supply crawlers to extract more, but they also are interesting units which provide a lot of choice in the game.
Bases are very different, requiring their own set of boosting facilities/drone control facilities which is much more expensive than crawlers as well as increasing inefficiency and Bdrones. It seems like a not all that useful comparison to make using simple FOP terms.
I'm not a crawler hater, it just feels like almost drawback free relatively fast doubling of production feels a bit.. overcentrilising (towards Crawler heavy builds), in a not quite interesting enough way. Games where I've used crawlers always seemed even more one sided than usual Transcend ones. However, I admit that I've not managed to get real time multiplayer working despite some trying (and pbem seems far too long term a commitment), so if crawlers are actually not top-class in the speed of payoff (accounting for limiting factors in other areas, like one of each fac per base, and issues with just making loads more bases) as I've been lead to believe then I don't have objections to them.
FOP=Factors Of Production (Energy, Mins, or Nuts)
And.. I do find Supply Crawlers are a very interesting addition to the game, but probably too cheap for their effectiveness overall. Unlike cities which require maintenance, increase inefficiency, require drone control, etc, they can pay for themselves pretty quickly and give strongly exponential increases in production power. A 4 min crawler (quite reasonable with enough formers) will pay for another crawler every 7.5 turns once in place (ignoring any Mineral boosting facilities, with a GJ factory it's 5 turns), which even accounting for former turns and time to move into position is a very impressive doubling time without any significant limiting factor (it's the lack of limiting factors which seems to be the issue, bases have all sorts of things slowing their exponential growth).
I like crawlers, but imo they are so cheap that even if they don't imbalance the game much in any particular direction (other than maybe towards people who get them sooner, or builders in general), they feel like they're the core of any competitive strategy. I'd prefer to play with Crawlers as a useful and interesting tool which can be powerful than with them as something absolutely required in huge numbers to win against a human. Reducing the doubling time by just upping the cost seems like the simplest way to do this.
A worker in a city can fully harvest a square; a supply crawler can only get one resource. They are fine for a single resource square, but most squares are better than that. A worker can harvest 3/2/3 or 6/6 from a hybrid forest square or a borehole; a supply crawler gets only half or less of the value.
Keep in mind, though, that a worker requires 2 nutrients and 2 psych upkeep, which cuts into that substantially. Once you've got hybrid forests, the worker may be slightly superior (until advanced specialists come along), and of course for your boreholes in the city radius (however many you can manage) the worker is better, but for the most part the crawler comes out better. Let's compare:
-Early game to early midgame (no advanced specialists, no hybrid forests): With a worker, you can work a forest for 2/2/1, or a farm/solar for roughly 3/1/1 (and that's a fairly good square). After discounting 2 nutrients for the worker and 1 energy to be multiplied into 2 psych to keep him happy, that's 0/2/0 or 1/1/0, as compared to 4 FOPs from a crawler (farm/condenser, or mine, or "energy park"). Free Market evens it out a bit, but not by all that much since it boosts energy parks as well. (An "energy park" style approach doesn't work as well with workers, as energy parks are a lot less efficient when interrupted by squares that have neither solar collectors nor mirrors, such as bases.)
-Late midgame (advanced specialists, hybrid forests, and soil enrichers are all available): You can work a forest for 3/3/2 (before Free Market) or farm/enricher/solar for 4/1/1; after psych and nutrients, that's 1/3/1 or 2/1/0; engineers mean that nutrients are worth roughly twice as much as the other two types, so that's effectively 5-6 FOP (7 with Free Market or Eudaimonia). Crawling farm/condenser/enricher gives you 6/0/0, for 12.QuoteA city created by a colony pod can grow. After 10 turns (with a 2N square available), it works 2 squares, and so on. Furthermore, it can spawn other colony pods for more cities. A supply crawler has no growth potental; it harvests exactly one resource, period.
And then the results of that harvesting can be used to build more supply crawlers to harvest more squares.QuoteHowever, a supply crawler can serve a strategic role. It can harvest squares that are small gaps between cities, rather than take the ICS approach and build another city.
And this is the sort of thing that it would do if depowered and cost-increased to be on par with workers, rather than giving more net benefit for less cost.QuoteIt can concentrate energy into a single city, perferably the HQ. It can provide food to a base that otherwise would face starvation. But I do not think these strategic roles in any way make it overpowered.
I'd say "concentrate energy into a single city" does, simply by making efficiency largely ignorable (and that's before considering stuff like the Supercollider and Space Elevator).
Oh, and another use: It can be used to get use out of squares that you don't want a base near for whatever reason.QuoteIt is just another great tool in a thinking man's arsenal. I would hate to see this tool removed
Me too, but I do want it to only be of advanced strategic use (and maybe some ability to help finish projects quicker, though nothing as strong as it is now in that respect), not "the most efficient use of squares."
Your analysis neglects the city square itself. A city with no worker (just a doctor/empath/etc) still produces a lot of resources, particularly with Free Market/Wealth.
True, and that may itself be too much. However, overuse of that feature is, by definition, kept in check by the factors that keep ICS in check, which you correctly identified as the need for multiplicative facilities for each base.
Essentially, what you're describing is exploiting ICS, which you yourself argued was not overpowered. The goal here is that workers should be the best use of land outside of specific strategic cases such as you described, which means having ICS and crawlers both weaker than workers.QuoteThe extra resources added by the worker definitely make the total MUCH more than a crawler would give. My crawlers typically provide either 2-3 N or 2-4 M or 1-3 E. This does not seem overpowered to me; it seems fairly valued.
I think that's because you're not using your crawlers to their fullest potential. Without mods to keep it under control, a crawler should be easily able to produce 4N (condenser+farm), up to 6N with AEE, 4M from rocky squares if you use mines, and 4E from energy parks (substantially less without energy parks, but nutrients+specialists are still a fairly strong way to get energy).
And remember, without crawlers you're looking at roughly 2 FOP anyway after subtracting costs (more with engineers or enrichers or hybrid forest), so 4N is still way too much.QuoteNormally, when someone says something is overpowered, there is apparently one overpowering strategy enabled by the overpowered item. I don't see this at all for crawlers. They can support any kind of strategy you want: large city, small city, builder, momentum.
Any strategy except "use primarily workers, with crawlers for niche strategically-defined roles."QuoteSo perhaps you can better explain to me what is the problem that you are trying to fix?
In short, that most of the time, crawling a square is a more effective use than working it.QuoteI am not familiar with the term FOP. What does it mean?
Ete answered this one.FOP=Factors Of Production (Energy, Mins, or Nuts)
And.. I do find Supply Crawlers are a very interesting addition to the game, but probably too cheap for their effectiveness overall. Unlike cities which require maintenance, increase inefficiency, require drone control, etc, they can pay for themselves pretty quickly and give strongly exponential increases in production power. A 4 min crawler (quite reasonable with enough formers) will pay for another crawler every 7.5 turns once in place (ignoring any Mineral boosting facilities, with a GJ factory it's 5 turns), which even accounting for former turns and time to move into position is a very impressive doubling time without any significant limiting factor (it's the lack of limiting factors which seems to be the issue, bases have all sorts of things slowing their exponential growth).
I like crawlers, but imo they are so cheap that even if they don't imbalance the game much in any particular direction (other than maybe towards people who get them sooner, or builders in general), they feel like they're the core of any competitive strategy. I'd prefer to play with Crawlers as a useful and interesting tool which can be powerful than with them as something absolutely required in huge numbers to win against a human. Reducing the doubling time by just upping the cost seems like the simplest way to do this.
Agreed; I think 10 rows is a good cost (comparable to the cost of another worker in a fairly large city.) That means a module cost of 36-39, probably best to have it at 36. (Also, it means banning higher-reactor crawlers.)
However, even that probably won't be enough; as I noted, workers are worth 2 net FOP in the early game, going up to 3 with AEE or 5 with hybrid forests, whereas crawlers are worth 4, up to 6 with AEE (and that's all nutrients, which are by far the best in the later game.) Removing the condenser nutrient bonus would help a lot (which is why my patch allows it), but even so running the numbers I think it'd also be necessary to reduce crawler output by 1. That way, crawling will be worth 2-3 FOP per square, comparable to workers. (They'll still be useful for reaching areas outside base radii, of course. And hurrying projects, though I think that also needs limits; finishing the Space Elevator the turn you get Super Tensile Solids might make for good fun in SP, but in MP it gives far too much of an advantage to teching factions.)First, until mineral limits are limited, which does not occur until early mid-game, a crawler can obtain at most 2 minerals. So it takes 15 turns for a crawler to multiply, AFTER it has made it to the square.
Yes, before mineral limits are lifted, that doesn't help as much...but a feature that's unbalanced for most of the game is still unbalanced.
However, I figure that it might make sense to compensate for crawler depowerment by moving the mineral-lifting cap to Industrial Automation, so they can get full minerals as soon as you can get them. (It's probably desirable anyway to have the resource-lifting techs be parallel rather than sequential, as having everyone beelining for the same 2 or 3 techs makes for a much less interesting game.)QuoteSecond, it might take 5-10 turns (or more) just to move from the city to the square being harvested.
I think we're generally looking at cases where it's harvesting inside the base radius.QuoteThird, you have to have a suitable rocky square with 8 turns of terraforming to produce a mine. There are not that many rocky square available, so that constrains how often you can do this.
True, but "condenser+farm to support 2 technicians, which then produce money to rush buy more crawlers" also has fairly low doubling time, especially once you get Tree Farms for +50% economy; at that point, 2 technicians are worth 12 energy per turn; rushing from 10 minerals on 1 crawler to 10 minerals on the next crawler costs 90, so that's still 7.5 doubling time.QuoteFurthermore, a city can harvest this just was well.
But it needs to spend nutrients and psych on the worker. If crawlers had a support cost, it would be a lot more even.QuoteBut you have missed the real culprit here: Terraformers. It is terraformers that are grossly overpowered.
As compared to what? Crawlers can be compared to working the square; formers are part of the game.
Formers would be grossly overpowered if using them instead of leaving the square "natural" weren't clearly how the game was meant to be played. Crawlers are overpowered because using them inside the base radius instead of working the square is not how the game was meant to be played.
(That said, advanced terraforming is probably overpowered, and needs a nerf, probably of the ecodamage persuasion.)1. In actual play, if I have a reasonable city spot that I can defend, I will always preference a city over a former.
What constitutes a reasonable city spot?Quote2. I typically build at least 4 clean formers for every 1 supply crawler, even though they are the same cost, because formers are overall more valuable and give faster paypack. Crawlers as just built for special purposes, to fill in games, or save cities the burden of having to bother harvesting a single resource square (possibliy producing specialists instead).
At 3 FOP per specialist (even before thinkers and engineers), even dual-resource spots are often worth crawling. Pretty much the only squares that aren't are forests and boreholes, and once you get engineers crawling nutrients is worth more than forests and boreholes.Quote3. EVERYTHING I build better have a pretty reasonable payoff, or I won't bother to build it. A Genejack factory in a decent city has a far higher return than the same resources spent on crawlers. Same with most energy multiplying facilities as well.
And once you've built all those?QuoteI don't know what got you on your rant about the cheapness of crawlers, but they are just not any cheaper than competing items, like colony pods, formers and resource multiplying buildings.
Colony pods, formers, and resource multiplying buildings do not directly compete with crawlers, because to be of use they require base-suitable squares, unimproved squares, and raw FOP respectively, whereas crawlers require improved squares; what directly competes with crawlers is workers. Compare crawlers to workers, and you'll see why they're such an issue.QuoteI think recycling centers are a much better value than a crawler because:
1. I get 1/1/1, something no crawler can give.
2. I don't have to terraform a square, or even have a square available.
3. It is a lot less vulnerable than a crawler.
Yes they are, if you have enough workers for all your terraformed squares. But you can only build one recycling center per base.QuoteAnd a recycling center is not the most valuable building by any means. The mutliplying buildings can be MUCH more valuable.
Also only one of each per base.
I was comparing colony pods to crawlers; you are comparing workers to crawlers. This is an apples to oranges comparison because you don't build workers. The workers build up automatically.
You "build" workers with nutrients. Since there is some degree of flexibility as to how to terraform a square (and thus what type of FOP to get), that is a valid comparison.QuoteSpecialists are not free; they cost you workers, which could harvest multiresource squares.
Crawlers can also harvest multiresource squares; they just only produce one resource. But if the difference is less than 3, or can be made less than 3 by appropriate terraforming, the specialist is still worth it.QuoteClean reactors are at the same tech level as mineral limits. In fact, I usually preference obtaining clean reactors first.
I thought Environmental Economics (energy limits and tree farms) was one of the first beelines.
Clean reactors are at the same tech level as mineral limits. In fact, I usually preference obtaining clean reactors first.Ecological Engineering (tier 4): 6 preqs
Bio-engineering (tier 5): 12 preqs
so in general, you're getting 4 mins a crawler long before clean formers are available, though perhaps some beelines skip mineral lifting for a very long time.
though perhaps some beelines skip mineral lifting for a very long time.
Indeed they do...however, they also don't reach clean. The MMI beeline does get you all of Bio-engineering's prerequisites (so it's only one more tech to grab bio-engineering for Clean)...however, well before that along the same beeline you have all of Ecological Engineering's prerequisites (assuming you also got Centauri Ecology for formers), and it's overall more useful (it not only lifts mineral restrictions, but also allows boreholes/mirrors/condensers if you didn't grab the Weather Paradigm, and of course it's only 1 after that for Environmental Economics for energy lifting and tree farms.)
On the way to the MMI beeline, I usually go for Neural Grafting and Gne Splicing first, before D:AP, unless I feel hard pressed to defend myself right away. And I then go for Bio-Engineering next, even though it is a sidetrack from MMI. Because the support minerals that I save by upgrading all of my formers and other units to clean is a much faster and higher payoff than I could get from lifting the mineral restrictions. This allows me to now be able to produce clean terraforms in mass quantities, without worrying about crippling my production with support costs.
Whoa, you must produce a lot of clean formers if that's a bigger boost than being able to use boreholes.QuoteSince I typically starting with 90% roads and forests, these techs don't have such an early payoff unless the map starts with enough terrain features that can be exploited without my terraforming.
How do you use those forests? Crawl them or work them? Because pre-Environmental Economics, they only produce 1 nutrient.
Whoa, you must produce a lot of clean formers if that's a bigger boost than being able to use boreholes.I do make a lot of clean formers!
How do you use those forests? Crawl them or work them? Because pre-Environmental Economics, they only produce 1 nutrient.I almost always work them. With a normal base (not on a Nut special or jungle) with recycling center, I can work 3 forests. The rest of the work land has to be 2 or more food. (I often get rid of the Nut limit early with Gene Splicing.) When I really need to boost food, I will occasionally farm; each farm means one more forest worked. Rather than crawl a forest and get 2 M, I will sometimes insteasd crawl a square for 2-3 N, which allows me to fully work 2-3 more forests.
I do make a lot of clean formers!
It is really a chicken and the egg problem. If I don't have a lot of formers, it takes forever to terraform things, especially boreholes. So rather than prioritize mineral limits to take advantage of boreholes, I prioritize clean to be able to build more formers. By the time the I have enough formers and other terraforming done to consider making boreholes, I usually have gotten MMI and am ready for the EE and EE.
Forest are much more of a priority, because I can make 5 forests for the time formers take for 1 borehole. And I get the benefit of self-growth of forests, which can save a lot of terraforming time if you get your forests started early, particularly since spreading forest squashes fungus.
But if you can only use 3 forests per base (less if you want the base to grow more), that does limit it quite a bit. Once you have as many forests as you can use (which needs maybe 1 former per several bases max before tree farms), you might as well get started on boreholes.QuotePlus, forests don't trigger ecodamage like a borehole does. I generally try for a very close to zero ecodamage game.
Borehole ecodamage really isn't that bad; it's about as much as 1 extra mineral. And of course without mods ecodamage is easy to control anyway, via the magic facilities.
I've thought about it more, and I realized that the real issue is the "doubling time". With a low doubling time, you need a huge number of formers to keep up with it even when using fairly easy terraforming like forests, and stuff like boreholes and condensers is generally not going to happen. With a larger "doubling time" (or even more, when you've reached maximum size), formers become less important, and more advanced terraforming becomes used more; crawlers are therefore more powerful with a larger "doubling time" since advanced terraforming (except for boreholes) is more likely to favor single-resource stuff, whereas forests are very crawler-unfriendly. (In between is the standard farm/solar, which actually usually comes out weaker than just a farm, crawling it, and having the citizen be a specialist instead.)
Thus, my questions for you are:
-What's your doubling time in your games?
-Do you ever use farm/solar?
Because I'd like to see a game with fairly large "doubling time" after the very beginning (30-40 turns seems good for once you have several bases), and where farm/solar does see substantial use for much of the game.
However, even so, crawlers become overpowered as the game progresses. Consider, for example, someone who's reached the following tech level:
-He has engineers available.
-He has hybrid forests.
-He can get 4 nutrients from a square, whether by farm/enricher (and condensers don't further increase it for whatever reason), or farm/condenser (and he hasn't learned AEE yet.)
-He either has hab domes, or has raised his city density to the point where it doesn't matter.
-He has expanded all he can; any more would run into either efficiency-related problems or the territory of other factions.
-He does not have satellites; either he lacks the tech, or just never got around to it, or is afraid they'll be shot down.
Now, consider two ways he can use his territory:
1. Forests. These are worth 3/2/2 each, so for each 2 forests he has enough surplus nutrients to use a specialist, say an engineer. Thus, each square is worth 2 minerals, 2 energy, 1.5 economy, and 1 labs.
2. Crawl nutrients. He can then support 2 specialists per square, so each square is worth 6 economy and 4 labs. He doesn't get any minerals, but at 4.5 economy per square more than option 1 (which is then multiplied by facilities into 13.5 more economy, or 16.75 more if he has a quantum lab), he can easily afford to make up the difference by rush buying.
Thus, option 2 is vastly superior to option 1.
With satellites, it's even worse:
1. With forests, he can support 3 citizens per square, so each square is worth 5 minerals, 5 energy, and 2 specialists, for a total of 5 minerals, 5 energy, 6 economy, and 4 labs.
2. With crawling nutrients, he can support 4 citizens per square, worth 4 minerals, 4 energy, 12 economy, and 8 labs.
Again, option 2 is vastly superior.
If anything other than "crawl nutrients" is to be effective into the late game, crawlers would have to be depowered. (Not "made cheaper", but actually "made less effective".)
Conversely, consider an early-game (recently got tree farms) base with 1 farm/solar square (let's say it's rainy and rolling but less than 1000 elevation) and 1 citizen. It can use the citizen to work the square, producing 3 nutrients, 1 minerals, and 1 energy, or build a crawler to crawl one square for 3 nutrients and turn the citizen into a specialist for 3 energy. So a crawler lets you give up 1 mineral for 2 energy, which seems to me it'll usually be a very good deal.
But let's say that crawlers have been made less effective, at the crawler will only produce 2 nutrients. Then you're giving up 1 mineral and 1 nutrient for 2 energy, which seems a lot more balanced. Even so, that means that a crawler is worth as much as a worker.
But in that case, let's say you have a rainy/rolling square and are trying to decide how to terraform it for your worker.
If you terraform it with farm/solar, then you get 3/1/1, which feeds the worker and keeps him happy, produces 1 mineral for building facilities, and will get you another worker in 50 turns (for, say, a size 4 base. At this stage, size 9 is probably more realistic for your core bases). Or you can terraform it with a forest for 2/2/1, which feeds the worker and keeps him happy, and produces 2 minerals; if we devote 1 mineral to facilities as before, then the other one can be used to produce a crawler in 30 turns, giving you the same value for cheaper.
Thus, we get the result that unless crawlers are made more expensive and depowered, it's still not worth working farm/solar unless you really don't care about energy (or are running Market, but in a balanced game that'll only be roughly 1/3 of the time.) I call that a problem.
But if you can only use 3 forests per base (less if you want the base to grow more), that does limit it quite a bit. Once you have as many forests as you can use (which needs maybe 1 former per several bases max before tree farms), you might as well get started on boreholes.
-What's your doubling time in your games?
-Do you ever use farm/solar?
Now, consider two ways he can use his territory:This is not a crawler verses non-crawler question. A city can harvest high nutrient squares even if crawlers did not exist. The fact is that IF you are capable of booming without excessive trouble, then at a certain point food is the highest value commondity, since it can translate to 5E specialists, with each person also getting 1/1/1 from sats. This is not showing that crawlers are overpowered, since a city can reap the same benefit with no crawlers at all. It is showing that food is very high value in the late midgame, once you get the techs to boost food production. Is that overpowered? I don't think so; I think it is a nice evolution for food to move to the top of the food chain, so to speak ;). But it says nothing about crawlers.
1. Forests. These are worth 3/2/2 each, so for each 2 forests he has enough surplus nutrients to use a specialist, say an engineer. Thus, each square is worth 2 minerals, 2 energy, 1.5 economy, and 1 labs.
2. Crawl nutrients. He can then support 2 specialists per square, so each square is worth 6 economy and 4 labs. He doesn't get any minerals, but at 4.5 economy per square more than option 1 (which is then multiplied by facilities into 13.5 more economy, or 16.75 more if he has a quantum lab), he can easily afford to make up the difference by rush buying.
I don't know how to answer the doubling time question. Once I reach a certain maximum expansion, doubling can occur with respect to population, but even more, doubling can occur with respect to econ/labs and production. If I take a wild guess, I suppose at midgame, doubling slows down to 20 turns or so.
I do sometimes use farm/solar, particularly if there is an energy special on the square so I can take full advantage of altitude.
For example, on the Vets map
You might argue, but why have a worker when I can crawl the square to get another specialist? If the square is something like a 4/x/5 square (max altitude, solar collector, mirror, food enhancements), I get more value working the square than crawling it, since I also pick up x minerals.
Finally, if the Econ SE setting is high enough (and the vast majority of the games I play it is), then each worked square gets an extra energy, putting it way out front of the crawled squares, with 20% more energy and some bonus minerals.
With respect to solar collectors, there is one other really good use for collecters and crawlers: energy farms. If you have some SPs at your HQ that provided special single city boosts, such as ME, Supercollider, Theory of Everything, Network Backbone, Longevity Vaccine, etc., then dedicating some squares to energy farms can be a very smart use of land.
You raise 9 squares to maximum altitude, put an Echeolon Mirror in the middle, surrounded by 8 solar collectors, with 9 crawlers homed to your HQ gathering energy, you can feed a lot of energy into those single city multiplying enhancements! On a few occasions, I have had a single city producing a breakthrough every turn.
So yes, solar collectors can be quite useful, without or without a farm!
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).
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.
I totally agree, ete, and I would just add that you do not have to use crawlers to achieve this benefit; in fact, as long as you raise elevation and add solar collectors to your farm/condensor/soil enhancer, direct collection is better than crawlers.
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.
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.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.
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.
I wonder why crawlers get all of this ire, but formers get none?
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.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.
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.In your AAR you listed I think 16 crawlers, 11 formers at one point? Was that entirely forced by the no expansion rules?
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?
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.
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.
Both are useful, but unless you think crawling a mine is "overpowered", then it is sill 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.
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.
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
but crawled energy does not have the same effect as crawled nutrients in that you can't turn loads of citizens into specialists.
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 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.
I have posted quited a few game of the month endgames.
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.
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.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!
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 (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.
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.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 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!I played a few more turns of Market Forces today. Have you started yet, Yitzi (or anyone else)? I would enjoy hearing your perspective on the scenario.
I played a few more turns of Market Forces today. Have you started yet, Yitzi (or anyone else)? I would enjoy hearing your perspective on the scenario.
So given the small land mass, do you still agree with your assessment that you should expand out to sea? Or do you think my strategy of raising land has more merit that it appeared at first glance?
The way I see it, Forests+tree facilities, Rocky Road Mines, and Advanced Terraforming (Mirrors, Condensors, Enrichers, Boreholes) are all fairly reasonably balanced with each other in terms of former/facility/tech investment and resource return (and all very useful), and Sea improvements have their own set of advantages which makes them interesting (easy to mass Nutrients, plenty of places for useful Tidal harnesses right away unlike Solar which needs high altitude). The only clear imbalance I see is basic terraforming options like Farm, Solar, and non-rocky Mine are near-useless in all but a few niche scenarios. I think trying to bring all the other useful and viable forming options DOWN to the effectiveness level of farm/solar will result in a much less interesting game. I'd suggest either attempting to bring Farm/Solar UP to the level of the others, or accepting that it's not the baseline by which you should measure all other forming options and letting it be largely useless.
The problems with bringing farm/solar up to the level of forests+hybrid forest or advanced terraforming all over the place (which is what you need to balance forests+hybrid forest or many of the better crawler-based strategies) are:
1. It makes power imbalances grow too fast in the early game, putting a heavy focus on early-game strength, and speed over long-term effectiveness. Some people like to play like that, I do not. As such, it's certainly worth at least having some way of playing without that.
2. The fact that advanced terraforming creates extra ecodamage suggests that having it all over the place is not what was originally intended; it was meant to be used sparingly, not as much as you could (and to compete with forests, it has to be done a lot.)
So I would dispute your core contention: I think that bringing everything down to a lower level would result in a longer, and therefore more interesting, game, by slowing growth.
How early game are we talking?
Because changes to forest pre-Tree Farm are going to be hard to make, and post tree farm.. I think you should be getting pretty great growth, because you've got to manage a large empire so real-time speed of play drops dramatically (unless you automate everything, which leads to really dumb things) despite an increased growth curve.
If you want to make a "I like to play games with lower growth curves" mod, that's fair enough, but that seems like a very different mission statement from balancing the game
because games are extremely long as it is
Also, no matter what you do (within reason) early game advantages and disadvantages are going to grow, because the game is built around exponential growth.
This is one of the things that makes SMAX great in my opinion, it lets you actually win games and makes everything count.
I'm pretty happy with the way Adv forming works. I don't agree that it needs to be used in huge amounts to "compete" with forests, the advanced things can and should simply be phased in replacing old forests/mines as and when former turns become plentiful and the clean mins limit is raised.
hm, with the length of most games on reasonable sized Transcend or from what I've seen in multiplayer, intentionally slowing the game down seems to be a not very good idea. I'm pretty sure the extreme pace of development in late game is a very intended and very useful feature, since it means that even when each turn is taking most of an hour you still get to see some progress and can reasonably end the game.
The issue isn't real-time speed of play, it's the ability to turn an advantage into a larger advantage. Keep in mind that Tree Farms aren't that late; beelining let's you get them only 10% of the way up the tech tree, and even if you go "tier by tier", you're only about halfway up the tech tree. Even fusion is only slightly more than halfway up the tech tree, which is way too early for growth to expand to the point of having such a huge influence on the game.
Yes, smaller advantages lead to bigger advantages.. But I'm far from convinced that AC has that balance wrong.QuoteIf you want to make a "I like to play games with lower growth curves" mod, that's fair enough, but that seems like a very different mission statement from balancing the game
It is related to balancing earlier-game strength with later-game strength,
Long as in how long it takes to complete, which is well into the months. And unless one player gives up due to massive powergraph advantage, it would go on a lot longer.Quotebecause games are extremely long as it is
Really? How many MP games do you know of where someone actually completed the tech tree (i.e. reached Threshold of Transcendence)?
The tech formula cost has to go up a lot, but honestly the factors of increase it uses are so tiny compared to the exponential growth that I would point to it as strong evidence of the game being designed for exponential growth.QuoteAlso, no matter what you do (within reason) early game advantages and disadvantages are going to grow, because the game is built around exponential growth.
Not really. Some things involve exponential growth, but all sorts of features (most notably the tech cost formula) suggest that exponential growth is not what the game is designed for.
Why should only endgame offense be able to kill people? Surely in a balanced game offense should provide a very real threat throughout the game, especially for many player games where attacking one guy is very likely to put you at a disadvantage so you need good risk/payoff ratios otherwise no one will fight.QuoteThis is one of the things that makes SMAX great in my opinion, it lets you actually win games and makes everything count.
Being able to actually win games is accomplished either by endgame offense being stronger than defense (which it is, with Blink and orbital insertions), or a way to win without conquering everyone else (i.e. transcendence.) What fast exponential growth lets you do is let you actually win games when you're only halfway up the tech tree.
ah, yes, i did misunderstand. In that case: both can use adv teraforming, so all that's happening is farm/solar still just sucks.QuoteI'm pretty happy with the way Adv forming works. I don't agree that it needs to be used in huge amounts to "compete" with forests, the advanced things can and should simply be phased in replacing old forests/mines as and when former turns become plentiful and the clean mins limit is raised.
You misunderstand: Obviously it doesn't have to be used in huge amounts to compete with forests if the rest is forests. But having farm/solar with occasional boreholes/mirrors/condensers is not enough to compete with forests (which also might have a few boreholes of their own).
Making the game any form of challenge for a competent player at librarian will be an insanely huge challenge unless you plan to do it by making the AI cheat a whole lot more at librarian. It is however a very useful project and all players would benefit from smarter AI, not just those who share your feelings on exponential growth.Quotehm, with the length of most games on reasonable sized Transcend or from what I've seen in multiplayer, intentionally slowing the game down seems to be a not very good idea. I'm pretty sure the extreme pace of development in late game is a very intended and very useful feature, since it means that even when each turn is taking most of an hour you still get to see some progress and can reasonably end the game.
Firstly, I'd also like to make the game harder naturally, so that "default" single-player is Librarian (where AI is fairly balanced against human players in terms of advantages, and the AI is cooperative enough to allow diplomacy-based strategies.)
Secondly, if each turn is taking an hour in MP, you've probably got other problems: Loose time controls give 5 seconds per base or active unit and 16 per event, suggesting that even with 30 bases (a very high number; at "cover all the territory inside radii" spacing, you can't fit 30 bases per faction on a standard map), and with 10 active units per base (also very high unless you're in a major war), you're expected to take roughly half an hour per turn on "loose" settings. (And yes, it'll be a fairly slow game. TBS games are designed to be somewhat slow) If you can provide a savegame of where it took an hour per turn, that might help figure out what's going on.I said most of an hour (meaning the majority of, >50%, actually closer to 35-45 mins), and was not talking about MP but the lategame turns of a large VS Ai game with broken AI factions. It's due to there being a hell of a lot of bases all churning out something most turns (mostly build order queue facilities), and having to manage a huge army attacking a large AI empire.
Thirdly, I have nothing against growth picking up in the actual late game (say, around the point where future tech starts to become available); it just shouldn't be so high when the game (as measured by the tech tree) is only half over.By that point games tend to be already decided in SP (possibly MP), and will have been going for many months in MP.
Now, of course a lot of this is my preferences and the rest is simply the way the game was probably designed to be played; if someone prefers the "a builder game ends when the tech tree is only half finished" style, they can of course play that (and then all that's needed is to strengthen farm/solar to only need occasional mirrors/condensers to compete with forests), but I don't think that's how the game was meant to be played, and it certainly doesn't give time to appreciate all the game has to offer (e.g. winning by transcendence).When a game ends depends on the ability of your foes, evenly matched players will still be able to have long games despite strong exponential growth, and I think that forcing the speed of growth down would simply delay already won games for longer than is enjoyable.
Yes, smaller advantages lead to bigger advantages.. But I'm far from convinced that AC has that balance wrong.
Long as in how long it takes to complete, which is well into the months.
The tech formula cost has to go up a lot, but honestly the factors of increase it uses are so tiny compared to the exponential growth that I would point to it as strong evidence of the game being designed for exponential growth.
Why should only endgame offense be able to kill people? Surely in a balanced game offense should provide a very real threat throughout the game, especially for many player games where attacking one guy is very likely to put you at a disadvantage so you need good risk/payoff ratios otherwise no one will fight.
ah, yes, i did misunderstand. In that case: both can use adv teraforming, so all that's happening is farm/solar still just sucks.
Making the game any form of challenge for a competent player at librarian will be an insanely huge challenge unless you plan to do it by making the AI cheat a whole lot more at librarian.
I said most of an hour (meaning the majority of, >50%, actually closer to 35-45 mins), and was not talking about MP but the lategame turns of a large VS Ai game with broken AI factions. It's due to there being a hell of a lot of bases all churning out something most turns (mostly build order queue facilities), and having to manage a huge army attacking a large AI empire.
By that point games tend to be already decided in SP (possibly MP), and will have been going for many months in MP.
When a game ends depends on the ability of your foes, evenly matched players will still be able to have long games despite strong exponential growth
The idea of measuring the progress of a game based on how far we are into the tech tree is interesting, but has nothing to do with reality.
Technologies can be deadly at any stage. Typically attack is about double defense as technology grows. (I know, some of this depends upon the technology paths chosen, but it is in the ballpark.)
BUT, this just does not happen; I have yet to play in a MP game where a Tachyon Field was available to anyone.
Early game, I do find some opportunities to use farm/solar for 3/1/3+, which is 7 FOPS, compared to 4 FOPS for Forest, or 5 FOPS for Forest with tree farm. Only when I have built a Hybrid forest structure, which is quite expensive, do I get to 7 FOPS for Forest.
But at a similar tech level, I also learn soil enrichers and condensers.
So I can convert many rolling squares into 4/1/5, which is 10 FOPS, much more than a Hybrid forest, and I don't have to build an expensive structure first.
Also, Boreholes can be built at a fairly early technology (only E4), and give 0/6/6, which is 12 FOPS.
Early game, I do find some opportunities to use farm/solar for 3/1/3+, which is 7 FOPS, compared to 4 FOPS for Forest, or 5 FOPS for Forest with tree farm. Only when I have built a Hybrid forest structure, which is quite expensive, do I get to 7 FOPS for Forest.
Keep in mind...Hybrid Forest is expensive, but you'd probably want it anyway for the economy and psych boost.QuoteBut at a similar tech level, I also learn soil enrichers and condensers.
No, enrichers aren't until AEE. Maybe you meant boreholes and condensers.
QuoteSo I can convert many rolling squares into 4/1/5, which is 10 FOPS, much more than a Hybrid forest, and I don't have to build an expensive structure first.
Even 3/1/5 (since you can't get enrichers yet) require you to raise the land to over 3000, and then build echelon mirrors, for something like a total of nearly 60 former-turns per square, as opposed to 4 for a forest.
The point is, where they can be built, they are a very powerful enhancement, and require no structure to take advantage of them. Forests can be built anywhere; they can't be built on a rocky square. Boreholes can be built on rocky squares. Their only restriction is slope, and by raising and/or lowering land, you can eliminate slopes that prevent boreholes from being built (just as you can terraform level to build a forest on a formerly rocky square).QuoteAlso, Boreholes can be built at a fairly early technology (only E4), and give 0/6/6, which is 12 FOPS.
Boreholes take a while to build, can't be built everywhere, and add ecodamage.
No, I meant what I said. Hybrid forest is at B6. Soil Enricher is at B7, only one level higher. Plus you really want to hurry to AEE, to get the Superformer!
Plus all of the minerals to build a Tree Farm and Hybrid Forest. How many clean formers could I build for that cost???
Because what I typically do is raise one square to over 3000 feet. This automatically pulls the 8 surrounding squares to over 2000 feet. I build a single Echelon mirror in the center square, and solar collectors in the surrounding squares. Now each square, including the center, produces 4 energy (the center square is also 4 because it gains one for higher altitude, and loses 1 because the mirror does not add to the square that it is in. If this is not just an energy farm, then add the food boosting improvements. Far less than 60 former turns per square on average for the 9 affected squares.
The point is, where they can be built, they are a very powerful enhancement, and require no structure to take advantage of them. Forests can be built anywhere; they can't be built on a rocky square. Boreholes can be built on rocky squares. Their only restriction is slope, and by raising and/or lowering land, you can eliminate slopes that prevent boreholes from being built (just as you can terraform level to build a forest on a formerly rocky square).